Buses in a computer
- 2. A computer processes and stores data as a series of electronic bits. These bits transfer internally within the circuitry of the computer along the electrical channels. Each channel, called a bus, allows the both inside and attached system unit to communicate with each other.
- 3. Buses are used to transfer bits of input devices to memory, from memory to processor, from processor to memory and from memory to output. Buses consist of two parts – Data bus and address bus. Data bus- to transfer actual data Address bus- to transfer information about where the data should reside in the memory.
- 4. The size of the bus, known as bus width determines the number of width the computer can transmit at one time. The larger the number of bits handled by the bus, the faster the computers transfers data. The wider the bus, the fewer the number of transfer steps required and the faster the transfer of data.
- 5. In conjunction with the bus width, many computer professionals refer to the computers word size. Word size is the number of bits a compueter can interprate and execute at a given time. Computers with larger word size ca process more data in the same amount of time than computers with a smaller word size.
- 6. Every bus also have got clock speed. Just like the processor, manufacturers state the clock speed for each busses is in hertz. Todays processors have got 1600MHz. The higher the bus clock speed, the faster the transmission of data, which results in programme running faster
- 7. A computer has got 3 main types of busses : A system bus, a back side bus and an expansion bus. A system bus, also known as the Front side bus (FSB) is part of the motherboard and connects the processor to the cache. An expansion bus allows the processor to communicate with pheripherals A backside bus (BSB) connects the processor to the cache.