多点通讯之Multi-drop

PCI Express system architecture里面有这么一句话：I/O devices share the PCI bus and are connected to it in a multi-drop fashion. 对multi-drop不太理解，搜索结果如下：

Connecting several devices to a single communications channel. It typically refers to devices that are polled in a master-slave configuration rather than in a peer-to-peer fashion. See master-slave communications.

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其中北桥芯片连接高速设备，如SDRAM和图形显示；南桥芯片连接低速和低性能的外设。南桥芯片内置中断控制器，通过INTR信号或者APIC（進階程式化插斷控制器 [Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller]）连接到CPU。