Despite numerous new bus systems based on the rapid changes in chip technology, VMEbus systems offer significant advantages such as their robustness, reliability and increased availability of processor, memory and I/O cards. With the increase in processing speeds and data transmission rates, 3 row DIN 41612 connectors have reached their limit, so the VME standard needs to be enhanced further. When VME architecture was increased from 8-bit to 64-bit and data transmission rates up to 160 Mbyte/s (VME 64x), Harting introduced harbus64 with 160 pins. This Eurocard connector is 100% backwards compatible to existing 3 row connectors with 96 contacts, therefore old can plug into new.