A high speed connection apparatus, method, and system is provided for
peripheral components on digital computer systems. The peripheral
component interconnect (PCI) specification is used as a baseline for an
extended set of commands and attributes. The extended command and the
attribute are issued on the bus during the clock cycle immediately after
the clock cycle when the initial command was issued. The extended commands
and attributes utilize the standard pin connections of conventional PCI
devices and buses making the present invention backward-compatible with
existing (conventional) PCI devices and legacy computer systems. Alternate
embodiments of the present invention utilize a side-band address port (SBA
port) to enable multiple targets to receive the same set of data. The
conventional PCI command encoding is modified and the extended command is
used to qualify the type of transaction and the attributes being used by
the initiator of the transaction. Some extended command encodings are
reserved but can be assigned in the future to new extended commands that
will behave in a predictable manner with current devices.