. Memory bus
l I/O bus
The I/O bus has historically been the slowest of all
buses, and the main focus when computer design
engineers try to improve bus speeds.
Processor Bus
The processor bus is communications path between
the CPU and the main bus. It is also used for
communications between the CPU and the processor
support chipset. The processor support chipset includes
chips such as an external memory cache and the bus
controller chip found on some microcomputers. The
size of the processor bus matches the size of the data
words used by CPU. For example, the 80486DX chip
uses 32-bit words; therefore the processor bus has 32
data lines, 32 address lines, and the control lines. The
Pentium processors have 64-bit words and use 32-bit
addresses. Processor buses can have a maximum data
transfer rate of the motherboard clock.
Memory Bus
The memory bus transfers data between the RAM
and the CPU. This bus can be the processor bus or will
be implemented by a dedicated chipset that controls the
memory bus.
In most computers that have a
motherboard clock that is faster then 16MHz, a special
memory controller chipset will control the memory bus.
Address Bus
The address bus transfers the next memory or I/O
address to be used in the next data transfer. The address
bus in 486 and Pentium systems is 32 bits wide.
I/O Buses
To thoroughly understand the I/O buses used in
modern microcomputer systems, an understanding of
the development and evolution of bus systems is
required. The microcomputers architecture is directly
related to the type of buses in the computer. Originally,
microcomputers used a bus system called the S-100 bus.
Using this system, any board could be plugged into any
open slot. The S-100 bus has 62 lines, each connect to
each of the 62-pin connectors. This system dedicated
eight lines for the eight data bits used in the Intel 8088
microprocessor.
Twenty lines are used for memory
addressing. The same 20 lines are also used to address
I/O devices. A control line determines whether the data
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on these 20 lines will be a memory address or an I/O
address. There are also several control lines and power
distribution lines.
The S-100 bus also provided four lines to designate
channels for Direct Memory Accessing (DMA). A
DMA channel allows a device, such as the hard drive,
to transfer data directly into RAM, vice transferring
data to the CPU and then having the CPU transfer it to
the RAM. The DMA channel number identifies which
device is requesting and transferring data on the data
bus.
Buses also need to be clocked to properly transfer
data. The early microcomputer buses were designed to
run at the speed of the microprocessor that was installed
on the board. The 4.7 MHZ 8088 microprocessor clock
was also used to clock the bus. The 7.16 MHZ
microprocessor clocked the bus at the same rate. The
ISA standard set the bus clock speed at 8 MHZ. To
maintain compatibility with the older controller boards,
this speed is still common in many computers today.
This speed is fine when getting input from a mouse or
a keyboard, even for most disk drives. The biggest
problem with bus speeds has occurred because of the
increase in video resolution, the development of video
capture boards and some network interfaces.
INDUSTRY STANDARD ARCHITECTURE
(ISA). As the microcomputer evolved, the eight data
lines and 20 address lines became insufficient to handle
the increased data capacity of the 16-bit processor. This
led to the development of the Industry Standard
Architecture (ISA). To be compatible with the boards
used in eight-bit computers, an additional 36-wire
connector was added to the circuit boards and the bus.
This added eight more data lines, four more address
lines, four more DMA channels, and five more IRQ
channels.
LOCAL BUSES. A local bus is a bus that is a
dedicated path between the processor and a specific
board. There are several local buses built into various
types of computers to increase the speed of data
transfers. Local buses for expanded memory and video
boards are the most common.
Some high-end
computers also provide a local bus for the hard drive.
The VESA Local Bus is one of the more popular
buses and was developed to increase the speed of data
transfer between memory and the video processing
board (video graphics adapter). VESA stands for Video
Electronics Standards Association. The VESA Local
Bus is a direct bus that connects the video processor