What is Computer Bus:

The electrically conducting path along which data is transmitted inside any digital electronic
device.

Bus Architecture:

Computers consist of several main functional units, including the central processor, memory and
input/output. The central processor performs basic arithmetic and logic, memory stores
programs and data, and input/output routes data to the computer's keyboard, screen and hard
drive. These parts communicate with each other. Some computer designs use a single bus
shared by all parts. While inexpensive, the system must manage its signals carefully, and some
parts wait until others finish communicating and relinquish control of the bus. Multiple buses
reduce the waiting time and keep the parts running efficiently. The layout of a computer's buses
and parts is called its bus architecture.

Bus Capacity:
A Computer bus consists of a set of parallel conductors, which may be conventional wires,
copper tracks on a PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD, or microscopic aluminum trails on the surface of a
silicon chip. Each wire carries just one bit, so the number of wires determines the largest data
WORD the bus can transmit: a bus with eight wires can carry only 8-bit data words, and hence
defines the device as an 8-bit device.
There are different sizes, or widths of data buses found in computers today. A data bus' width is
measured by the number of bits that can travel on it at once. The speed at which its bus can
transmit words, that is, its bus BANDWIDTH, crucially determines the speed of any digital
device. One way to make a bus faster is to increase its width.

Types of Buses:
There are 3 types of fundamental internal buses in the computer architecture. These are the
major types of bus in the computer. They are

1. Data bus
2. Address bus
3. control bus
Data Bus:

The data bus acts as a conduit for data from the keyboard, memory and other devices. It passes
information at speeds up to billions of characters per second. The central processor reads the
data, performs calculations, and moves new data back to memory, the hard drive and other
locations.

Address Bus:

The computer must be able to access every character of memory rapidly, so every character
has its own address number. The central processor specifies which addresses it wants to read
or write and the address bus carries this information to a memory controller circuit, which
locates and fetches the information. Some locations, called random-access memory, hold
program instructions and temporary calculation results. Other locations point to the hard drive,
mouse and keyboard. The control bus specifies which of these two sets of addresses become
active for a particular memory operation.

Control Bus:

The motherboard's control bus manages the activity in the system. The control bus, like the
other buses, is simply a set of connections among the parts in the computer. The control bus
determines which direction the data is moving. All parts "agree to recognize" that if one
connection carries a voltage and the next one does not, it means that the central processor
reads from memory. If the connections reverse roles, the processor writes to memory. Other
connections deal with the "chunking" of data 8, 16, 32 or 64 bits at a time. Still others determine
if data is being shuttled to the central processor from memory or the keyboard. This signaling
system prevents data from going to the wrong place.

external buses:
Besides internal buses, a number of I/O Buses, connects various peripheral devices to the CPU.
These buses are called external buses. such as Universal Serial Bus, RS-232, Controller Area
Network (CAN).