Computer Buses

A common pathway between resources and devices or you can say a bus is a subsystem that
transfers data or power between computer components inside a computer or between computers.
Unlike a point-to-point connection. a bus can logically connect several peripherals over the same set of
wires. Each bus defines its set of connectors to physically plug devices, cards or cables together.
Also there are another definition: A collection of wires through which data is transmitted from
one part of a computer to another. You can think of a bus as a highway on which data travels within a
computer. When used in reference to personal computers, the term bus usually refers to internal bus.
This is a bus that connects all the internal computer components to the CPU and main memory.
There's also an expansion bus that enables expansion boards to access the CPU and memory. For
example, a bus enables a computer processor to communicate with the memory or a video card to
communicate with the memory.
Types of Bus
There are two major types:
• The system bus (local bus).
• Peripheral bus (external bus).
The system bus, also known as the "front side bus" or "local bus," is the internal path from the CPU
to memory and is split into address bus and data bus subsets. Addresses are sent over the address lines
to signal a memory location, and data are transferred over the data lines to that location. System buses
transfer data in parallel. In a 32-bit bus, data are sent over 32 wires simultaneously. A 64-bit bus uses
64 wires.
The peripheral bus is the pathway to the peripheral devices such as a disk or printer. PCI, AGP
and PCI Express are widely used peripheral buses. Devices connect to these parallel buses with cables
to controller cards that plug into slots on the motherboard. Another common bus is USB, and devices
are cabled to ports on the computer. USB is a serial bus, in which data travels over one wire.
Other peripheral buses have been used, including ISA, EISA, Micro Channel, VL-bus, NuBus,
TURBOchannel, VMEbus, MULTIBUS and STD bus.
All buses consist of two parts

An address bus

A data bus
The address bus transfers information about where the data should go whereas the data bus
transfers actual data to that location.
Different types of expansion busses: PCI, AGP, USB, PC Card, 1394 Bus, I’ll talk about the
famous one “USB”. Nowadays It’s at any PC or laptop. It’s easy to find it.

USB: (Universal Serial Bus) is a new external bus developed by Intel, Compaq, DEC, IBM, Microsoft,
NEC and Northern Telcom and released to the public in 1996 with the Intel 430HX Triton II Mother
Board. USB has the capability of transferring 12 Mbps, supporting up to 127 devices and only utilizing
one IRQ. For PC computers to take advantage of USB, the user must be running Windows 95 OSR2,
Windows 98 or Windows 2000. Linux users also have the capability of running USB with the proper
support drivers installed. To determine if your computer supports USB on the back, front or sides of
the computer, look for a small connector with the below symbol.

BUS SPECIFCATIONS
Bus Bus The size of a bus, known as its width, is
Width
Bus Speed Bandwidth important because it determines how much
(bits)
(MHz) (MBytes/sec)
8-bit ISA 8 8.3 7.9 data can be transmitted at one time. For
example, a 16-bit bus can transmit 16 bits of
16-bit ISA 16 8.3 15.9
data, whereas a 32-bit bus can transmit 32
EISA 32 8.3 31.8
bits of data. A computer or devices bus
VLB 32 33 127.2
speed or throughput is always measured in
PCI 32 33 127.2
bits per second or megabytes per second.
64-bit PCI 2.1 64 66 508.6
BUS SPEED: Clock rate, how fast can you
AGP 32 66 254.3
transfer the data100, 133, 400, 800 MHz.
AGP (x2
32 66x2 508.6 In networking, a bus is a central cable that
mode)
AGP (x4 connects all devices on a local-area network
32 66x4 1,017.30 (LAN). It is also called the backbone.
mode)