Editing Micro Channel architecture (section)

=== Technology ===
The [[IBM AT]] bus, which later became known as the [[Industry Standard Architecture]] (ISA) bus, had a number of technical design limitations, including:
* A slow bus speed.
* A limited number of [[interrupt]]s, fixed in hardware.
* A limited number of [[I/O device]] addresses, also fixed in hardware.
* Hardwired and complex configuration with no conflict resolution.
* Deep links to the architecture of the [[80x86]] chip family<ref group='NB'>Use of the ISA bus outside of machines employing the 80x86 CPU family was rare.  Notable non-x86 hardware that used the ISA bus include the [[IBM RT PC]], [[BeBox]], some [[Apollo/Domain]] workstations, and some members of the [[Digital Equipment Corporation|Digital Equipment]] [[AlphaServer]] line.</ref>
In addition, it suffered from other problems:
* Poor [[Ground (electricity)|grounding]] and power distribution.
* Undocumented bus interface standards that varied between systems and manufacturers.

These limitations became more serious as the range of tasks and peripherals, and the number of manufacturers for [[IBM PC compatible|IBM PC-compatibles]], grew. IBM was already investigating the use of [[RISC]] processors in desktop machines, and could, in theory, save considerable money if a single well-documented bus could be used across their entire computer lineup.