The Advanced Computing Environment is reported to be taking on board a new serial bus for connecting peripherals to computers into its Advanced RISC Computing specification: called Access, the bus has been jointly developed by ACE member Digital Equipment Corp and PhilipsSignetics, and the firms expect to have an Access industry group in place by the end of the year; Access doesn’t require new silicon because it builds on the hardware protocols of Philips/Signetics’ IC interchip bus developed in the early 1980s; as a result, costs are reduced and Access is expected to cost around $11, compared with around $54 for a common RS232 port.
