What do you mean by a communication bus? List its types.

Q. What do you mean by a communication bus? List its types.

Answer :-

A communication bus is a collection of wires that transfer data between computer components, i.e., carry binary information to and from input/output devices and memory. It usually transmits binary numbers, one bit per wire.

The bus system in computer is made up of three types of buses:

Address Bus:- Address bus system is used to specify address of a data/memory location. CPU is connected to main memory by a set of parallel wires, which is the address bus and carries address to Memory Address Register (MAR). The width of a bus determines the number of memory locations that can be addressed. Address bus consists of 16 wires, thus it consumes 16 bits, i.e., its width is 16 bits.

Data Bus:- Data bus carries data in binary form. It is an 8-bit bus to transfer data from one place/component to another in a computer system. The size of data bus from memory to CPU equals the number of bits in an instruction called CPU word length. Also, number of parallel wires is called bus width, as it depends on number of bits.

Control Bus:- Control bus carries instructions to carry out operations such as Read from/Write to memory and its associated input-output (I/O) operations.