The tool-specific view stands in sharp contrast to what many in the industry are claiming when it comes to technologies that interconnect chips and boards to one another.

This debate is of some interest to PLX Technology, since our role is to provide interconnection silicon to a variety of applications.

Since it has become clear over the past few years that PCI can no longer serve the same variety of diverse needs that it once did in a wide range of modern systems, a number of interconnection standards have been proposed to supplant it and become the next big thing.

In most cases, these are existing standards that are being repurposed for this new use as a backplane. Examples include HyperTransport and RapidIO, both originally designed as high-speed, parallel, point-to-point interfaces to CPUs. But so far, neither one has gained momentum for serial backplanes.

PCI Express, on the other hand, was defined from the start to be used as an I/O interconnect on a motherboard or backplane. It is truly serial, scalable, flexible, and has the features necessary for backplane and motherboard I/O use.

Different standards have different capabilities and restrictions, and are suitable for different applications. A system will be faster, cheaper, more flexible and more feature-rich if the different interfaces are matched to the use for which their characteristics are best-suited.

If an existing, ubiquitous technology does the job, even with some reasonable extension, it will always win. This is so due to the economics (plentiful supply of parts), the infrastructure (especially the software base) and the familiarity with the standard (it may not work perfectly, but at least I know its constraints).

It is precisely when the existing technology has reached its practical limits, as the PCI bus has today, that the door is opened to something new.

PCI Express has the features, performance, software compatibility and momentum to become the interconnect standard for motherboard I/O and mainstream backplanes.

The industry should consider a new metaphor for acceptance of standards that represents a more-tailored approach to the problem rather than depending on one size fitting everyone. And while we're at it, let's put away the hammer and try a wrench.

Larry Chisvin is Vice President of marketing at Plx Technology (www.plxtech.com) in Sunnyvale, Calif.