Extended Industry Standard Architecture

The Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) is a bus standard for [IBM compatibles]? that extends the ISA bus architecture to 32 bits and allows more than one CPU to share the bus. The [bus mastering]? support is also enhanced to provide access to 4 GB of memory. Unlike MCA, EISA can accept older XT bus architecture and ISA boards.

EISA was announced in late 1988 by compatible vendors as a counter to IBM's MCA in its PS/2? series. Although somewhat inferior to the MCA it became much more popular due to the proprietary nature of MCA.

See also:

• Industry Standard Architecture
• Micro Channel Architecture
• Peripheral Component Interconnect
• XT bus architecture

---

Article based on [Extended Industry Standard Architecture] at [FOLDOC], used with permission.