Intel's Communication Streaming Architecture (CSA) was a mechanism used in the Intel Hub Architecture to increase the bandwidth available between a network card and the CPU. It consists of connecting directly the network controller to the Memory Controller Hub (northbridge), instead of to the I/O Controller Hub (southbridge) through the PCI bus, which was the common practice until that point. The following year, PCI Express replaced CSA as the method of connecting network chips in Intel's chipsets, and the technology was subsequently discontinued.