data bus


data bus

[′dad·ə ‚bəs] (electronics) An internal channel that carries data between a computer's central processing unit and its random-access memory.

data bus

(architecture)The bus (connections between and within theCPU, memory, and peripherals) used to carry data. Otherconnections are the address bus and control signals.

The width and clock rate of the data bus determine its datarate (the number of bytes per second it can carry), which isone of the main factors determining the processing power of acomputer. Most current processor designs use a 32-bit bus,meaning that 32 bits of data can be transferred at once. Someprocessors have an internal data bus which is wider than theirexternal bus in order to make external connections cheaperwhile retaining some of the benefits in processing power of awider bus.

See also data path.

data bus

An internal pathway across which data are transferred to and from the processor or to and from memory. See local bus, system bus and peripheral bus.