Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions Questions Related to Specific Gage Products Can't Find an Answer?

Q. What is Bus Mastering?

A. Bus Mastering, available on the CompuScope 8500, is an operating mode in which the CompuScope card acts as the PCI Bus Master. A PCI Bus Master is a card which can take control of the bus and transfer data to any PCI target device such as system RAM, a DSP card, a SCSI card, etc., without any involvement from the CPU.

When a PCI card such as the CS8500 becomes the Bus Master, it is said to be operating in Master Mode. On the other hand, when the CPU is controlling the transfer of data from the add-on card to its system RAM, the card is said to be working in Slave mode.

According to benchmarks carried out by Gage, the maximum throughput possible in the Slave mode of operation is approximately 10 MB/s, less than one-tenth of the Master mode rate .

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