Buses
A collection of electrical conduits that carry bytes of information back and forth between the components.
Typically designed to transfer fixed-size chunks of bytes know as words. The number of bytes in a word is a fundamental system parameter that varies across systems.
Most machines has a word size of either 4 bytes (32-bit) or 8 bytes (64-bit).
Alternative defintion
Buses are subsystems that that are used to connect computer components and transfer data between them.
As an example, an internal bus connects computer internals to the motherboard.
A bus may be parallel or serial.
- Parallel busses transmit data across multiple wires.
- Serial buses transmit data in bit-serial format.