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What Is Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)? PCI, or Peripheral Component Interconnect, is a standard hardware bus for connecting peripheral devices to a computer's motherboard, allowing them to communicate with the CPU and memory. This connection is made through slots on the motherboard where expansion cards, such as graphics, sound, and network cards, can be inserted. While older PCI uses a parallel bus, its successor, PCI Express (PCIe), is a much faster serial bus that is now the standard for high-performance devices like modern graphics cards.

What PCI is and does

Hardware connection: It provides a standardized interface to connect expansion cards to a computer's motherboard.

Enables communication: It allows devices like graphics cards, sound cards, and network interface cards to send data to and from the CPU and memory.

Superseded older standards: It replaced older, more restrictive bus systems like the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus.