3GIO technology dubbed "PCI Express"

SEATTLE--The Third-generation input-output (3GIO) standard spawned by Intel and now backed by others has been given a formal name: PCI Express. The PCI-SIG announced the name Wednesday at Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) conference here.

PCI is a standard way to plug devices such as network cards into a computer, but PCI Express will enable faster communications when it begins arriving at the end of 2003, its advocates say. The standard will first be used to connect chips within a computer and the graphics subsystem, with high-speed network cards to follow, supporters expect. A draft of PCI Express version 1.0 has been turned over for PCI-SIG's more than 740 members to review, and the final version is expected by a June 3-4 developer conference.