Extended Industry-Standard Architecture

Extended Industry-Standard Architecture

(architecture, standard)(EISA) /eesa/ A bus standard forIBM compatibles that extends the ISA bus architecture to32 bits and allows more than one CPU to share the bus. Thebus mastering support is also enhanced to provide access to4 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 acounter to IBM's MCA in its PS/2 series. Althoughsomewhat inferior to the MCA it became much more popular dueto the proprietary nature of MCA.