A connector specification that allows a slot-based peripheral to have direct connection to a microprocessor using a HyperTransport interface was released by the HyperTransport Consortium. It is known as HyperTransport eXpansion (HTX). Using a reversed instance of the same mechanical connector as a 16-lane PCI-Express slot (plus an x1 connector for power pins), HTX allows development of plug-in cards that support direct access to a CPU and DMA to the system RAM. The initial card for this slot was the QLogic InfiniPath InfiniBand HCA. IBM and HP, among others, have released HTX compliant systems.