The ACR SIG was founded by 3Com, AMD, Acer Laboratories, Conexant, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, nVidia, PCTEL, Texas Instruments, and VIA Technologies. The group’s mission is to promote the development and introduction of simple, reliable and inexpensive communications and audio systems for the personal computing market segment.

The Advanced Communications Riser Specification defines a physical design and interfaces for multiple communications and audio subsystem in PCs. The ACR interface combines several existing communications buses, and introduces a new, advanced communications bus answering industry demand for low-cost, high-performance communications peripherals. The ACR Specification enables riser-based broadband communications, networking peripheral and audio subsystem designs in an open-standards context. ACR supports modems, Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN), Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and audio technologies. Provisions are also made for future wireless bus support. The ACR Specification 1.0 was published in February this year. The first ACR Plugfest just concluded in Austin, Texas with the participation of nine ACR member companies.

Examples of some ACR LAN and WAN configurations:

 Benefits of the ACR SIG Specification

The ACR Specification provides the following technology, cost and integration benefits:

The ACR interface and connector scheme provide the following key benefits:

What ACR Members Add

“AMD supports the efforts of the ACR special interest group to unify the industry behind an open standard that integrates networking and broadband access for the next generation of PC communications”, said Mike Johnson, vice president of the Advanced Architecture Lab at AMD. “The ACR Specification lowers the cost of high-performance communications through integration and allows multiple generations of core logic and peripheral components without frequent architecture changes.”

Archtek endorses and supports the ACR SIG initiative.  The versatility of ACR designs is the best approach to serve the systems of the next wave”, said Mahan Chu, vice president of Archtek. “Archtek will show an ACR combo card supporting AC-link V.90 modem/1M HPNA/10M Ethernet/USB during the Computex exhibition.”

"Motorola is committed to supporting riser card initiatives such as the Advanced Communications Riser (ACR) product family," said Mike Tramontano, director of marketing at Motorola's Software Products Division.  "The ACR Special Interest Group's new offerings will accelerate the market adoption rate of software communications technology by addressing issues of cost, small-form-factor design and configuration flexibility.  The resulting advantages of lower system costs and enriched functionality will benefit PC OEMs and consumers alike."

“PCTEL’s participation in the founding of the ACR SIG was to contribute to the development of a single, highly integrated specification for future implementation of modem riser product, explained Peter Chen, CEO of PCTEL.  “PCTEL is committed to develop and market industry leading, highly integrated broadband communications and home networking solutions that leverage our HSP technology and new industry standard riser interfaces such as the ACR.  We have been witness to the benefits of modem riser technology to both manufacturers and end users of high speed internet access and networking technology.”

“SigmaTel is pleased to have the opportunity to join other leading communications companies to develop and promote product designs for the ACR riser, which ultimately decreases the cost to manufacture a PC. These open standards help to lower the deployment costs for audio, networking and broadband connectivity, while making the devices more flexible and adaptable,” said Alan Hansford, vice president of marketing for SigmaTel. “This as another step in our continuing leadership in and commitment to delivering high-performance, cost effective solutions, as well as strengthening our relationship with major OEMs.”

"The ACR SIG's charter to develop an open specification for new and advanced PC communication riser cards is beginning to bear fruit." explained Kapriel Karagozyan, vice president of sales at Smart Link. "We have seen a great deal of progress in releasing real, working specifications, such as ACR.Lite, which are already being adopted by our customers and will be shipping shortly."

"All ACR Special Interest Group members play an equally important role in bringing this new communications spec to market, from board level implementation to the manufacture of riser cards" commented Ted Lee, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for VIA Technologies, Inc.  "For its part, VIA Technologies is working at the grassroots chipset support and motherboard implementation level. Leveraging our close working relationship with the world's leading motherboard manufacturers puts VIA in a unique position to ensure ACR enabled motherboards will quickly hit critical mass volumes by Q3 - Q4 2000".

About the Advanced Communications Riser Special Interest Group

The ACR Special Interest Group (ACR SIG) manages the development of the ACR Specification. The ACR SIG is an open, not-for-profit organization representing the microcomputer industry. ACR SIG membership is open to the microcomputer industry.

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Copyright © 2000 Advanced Communication Riser SIG.   Last modified on June 01, 2000