Buses and their Types

Lecture 8
Introduction to ICT

3-
What is a Bus?

• A communication pathway or set of parallel lines

used to connect two or more devices
• Most important component of computer
architecture
• more devices share the same bus
• Often grouped
 A number of channels in one bus
 e.g. 32 bit data bus is 32 separate single bit channels

3- 2
What is a Bus?

• All components of computer are connected with

set of parallel lines
• All these lines are used to transfer data from
one component to other
• Data is transferred in form of bits through these
parallel lines
• These lines are called buses

3- 3
Types of Buses

• System Bus
• Expansion Bus

Rev. by Luciano Gualà (2008-09) 3- 4

System Bus

• Used to connect main components of computer

• Used to connect CPU, Memory, I/O Devices
• Generally 70-100 parallel lines in system bus
• Every line transfer one bit at a time

3- 5
System Bus

• Data Bus
• Address Bus
• Control Bus

3- 6
Data Bus

• Carries data
• Width is a key determinant of performance
 8, 16, 32, 64 bit

3- 7
Address bus

• Identify the source or destination of data

• e.g. CPU needs to read an instruction (data)
from a given location in memory
• Bus width determines maximum memory
capacity of system
 e.g. 8080 has 16 bit address bus giving 64k address
space

3- 8
Control Bus

• Transfer Control and timing information

 Memory read/write signal
 Interrupt request
 Clock signals
 Control signals

3- 9
Assignment

• Study control signals and make a list

• Describe every control signal briefly

Rev. by Luciano Gualà (2008-09) 3 - 10

Bus Interconnection Scheme

• Every device is attached to the bus:

 its use needs to be coordinated

3 - 11
Big and Yellow?

• What do buses look like?

3 - 12
Single Bus Problems

• Lots of devices on one bus leads to:

 Propagation delays
• Long data paths mean that co-ordination of bus use can
adversely affect performance
• If aggregate data transfer approaches bus capacity
• Most systems use multiple buses to overcome
these problems

Rev. by Luciano Gualà (2008-09) 3 - 13

Traditional
(with cache)

3 - 14
Bus Types

• Dedicated
 Separate data & address lines
• Multiplexed
 Shared lines
 Address valid or data valid control line
 Advantage - fewer lines
 Disadvantages
• More complex control
• Ultimate performance

3 - 15