Intel's Communication Streaming Architecture (CSA) was a mechanism used in the Intel Hub Architecture to increase the bandwidth available between a network card and the CPU. It directly connected the network controller to the Memory Controller Hub ( northbridge), instead of to the

I/O Controller Hub I/O Controller Hub (ICH) is a family of Intel Corporation, Intel southbridge (computing), southbridge microchips used to manage I/O, data communications between a CPU and a motherboard, specifically Intel chipsets based on the Intel Hub Architectur ...

(southbridge) through the

PCI PCI may refer to: Business and economics * Payment card industry, businesses associated with debit, credit, and other payment cards ** Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for credit card processors * Prov ...

bus, which was the common practice until that point. The technology was only used in Intel chipsets released in 2003. It was largely seen as a stop-gap measure to allow

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use in ...

chips to run at full-speed until the arrival of a faster expansion bus. It was also used to connect the

Wireless networking A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking allows homes, telecommunications networks, and business installations to avoid the costly process of introducing cables in ...

chips in Intel's

Centrino Centrino was a brand name of Intel Corporation which represented its Wi-Fi and WiMAX wireless computer networking adapters. The brand name was first used by the company as a platform-marketing initiative. The change of the meaning of the brand n ...

mobile platform. CSA-connected Ethernet chips showed consistently higher transfer rates than comparable PCI cards. Shortly after the CSA was introduced,

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a high-speed standard used to connect hardware components inside computers. It is designed to replace older expansion bus standards such as Peripher ...

was introduced and replaced the CSA stopgap. The technology was subsequently discontinued.

References

External links

Intel's page on CSA
{{comp-stub Intel products