EISA is known for being backward compatible with which earlier standard?

EISA, which stands for Extended Industry Standard Architecture, is known for being backward compatible with the ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) standard. This compatibility is significant because it allows EISA expansion cards to be used in ISA slots and vice versa. EISA was developed to provide greater bus bandwidth and support for new features while not completely abandoning the existing installed base of ISA cards. This backward compatibility was crucial for businesses looking to upgrade their systems without needing to replace all of their existing hardware.

The other options do not relate to EISA's compatibility directly. PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) is a newer standard that does not maintain compatibility with ISA. AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) was specifically designed for graphics cards and is not backward compatible with ISA. DMA (Direct Memory Access) refers to a feature related to how data is transferred, not a standard in the same way that ISA or EISA are classified. Thus, the association of EISA with ISA is pivotal in understanding the evolution of computer bus architectures.