Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) refers to a legacy computer bus architecture commonly used in IBM compatible personal computers (PCs) during the 1980s and early 1990s. It was the original standard for connecting peripheral devices such as expansion cards, including sound cards, network cards, and graphics cards, to the motherboard of a computer.
The ISA bus featured a 16-bit data path and ran at a speed of 8 MHz. It offered a maximum bandwidth of 8 megabytes per second (MB/s) and supported a maximum of 16.7 million unique input/output (I/O) addresses. The ISA bus used a simple design and a parallel bus topology for data transmission between devices, using a system of interrupts and I/O port addresses for communication.
The designation "industry standard" indicates that the ISA bus was widely accepted and adopted by various manufacturers, making it a common and widely-used standard in the computer industry during its time. It allowed for compatibility between different devices and systems, enabling users to easily swap or upgrade components without compatibility issues.
However, with the emergence of more advanced and faster bus architectures, such as PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) and AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port), the ISA bus was gradually phased out of newer computer systems. Modern motherboards and systems no longer support ISA expansion cards due to their limitations in terms of speed and performance.
In summary, Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) refers to a computer bus architecture that was widely utilized in IBM compatible personal computers during the 1980s and early 1990s. It provided a standardized method for connecting peripheral devices to the motherboard and was eventually replaced by more advanced bus architectures.
