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System Bus Types

There are typically several bus types that form a hierarchy in a modern motherboard to allow communication between components. The fastest is the processor bus that connects the CPU to the north bridge. The AGP bus is for graphics cards and the PCI bus connects peripherals like network and sound cards. Slower devices use the older ISA bus that has been phased out. BIOS software acts as an interface between the operating system and hardware, controlling devices and their drivers that can come from the motherboard, expansion cards or be loaded from disk.

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Jayakrishnan C Nair
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110 views

System Bus Types

There are typically several bus types that form a hierarchy in a modern motherboard to allow communication between components. The fastest is the processor bus that connects the CPU to the north bridge. The AGP bus is for graphics cards and the PCI bus connects peripherals like network and sound cards. Slower devices use the older ISA bus that has been phased out. BIOS software acts as an interface between the operating system and hardware, controlling devices and their drivers that can come from the motherboard, expansion cards or be loaded from disk.

Uploaded by

Jayakrishnan C Nair
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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System Bus Types, Functions, and Features The heart of any motherboard is the various buses that carry

signals between the components. A bus is a common pathway across which data can travel within a computer. This pathway is used for communication and can be established between two or more computer elements. The PC has a hierarchy of different buses. Most modern PCs have at least three buses; some have four or more. They are hierarchical because each slower bus is connected to the faster one above it. Each device in the system is connected to one of the buses, and some devices (primarily the chipset) act as bridges between the various buses. The main buses in a modern system are as follows: Processor bus. Also called the front-side bus (FSB), this is the highest-speed bus in the system and is at the core of the chipset and motherboard. This bus is used primarily by the processor to pass information to and from cache or main memory and the North Bridge of the chipset. The processor bus in a modern system runs at 66MHz, 100MHz, 133MHz, 200MHz, 266MHz, 400MHz, 533MHz, or 800MHz and is normally 64 bits (8 bytes) wide. AGP bus. This is a high-speed 32-bit bus specifically for a video card. It runs at 66MHz (AGP 1x), 133MHz (AGP 2x), 266MHz (AGP 4x), or 533MHz (AGP 8x), which allows for a bandwidth of up to 2133MBps. It is connected to the North Bridge or Memory Controller Hub of the chipset and is manifested as a single AGP slot in systems that support it. PCI bus. This is usually a 33MHz 32-bit bus found in virtually all newer 486 systems and Pentium and higher processor systems. Some newer systems include an optional 66MHz 64bit version mostly workstations or server-class systems. This bus is generated by either the chipset North Bridge in North/South Bridge chipsets or the I/O Controller Hub in chipsets using hub architecture. This bus is manifested in the system as a collection of 32-bit slots, normally white in color and numbering from four to six on most motherboards. High-speed peripherals, such as SCSI adapters, network cards, video cards, and more, can be plugged into PCI bus slots. PCI-X and PCI-Express are faster developments of the PCI bus. PCI-Express motherboards and systems began to appear in mid-2004. ISA bus. This is an 8MHz 16-bit bus that has disappeared from recent systems after first appearing in the original PC in 8-bit, 5MHz form and in the 1984 IBM AT in full 16-bit 8MHz form. It is a very slow-speed bus, but it was ideal for certain slow-speed or older peripherals. It has been used in the past for plug-in modems, sound cards, and various other low-speed peripherals. The ISA bus is created by the South Bridge part of the motherboard chipset, which acts as the ISA bus controller and the interface between the ISA bus and the faster PCI bus above it. The Super I/O chip usually was connected to the ISA bus on systems that included ISA slots.

BIOS BIOS is a term that stands for basic input/output system, which consists of low-level software that controls the system hardware and acts as an interface between the operating system and the hardware. BIOS is essentially the link between hardware and software in a system.

The BIOS itself is software running in memory that consists of all the various drivers that interface the hardware to the operating system. The BIOS is unique compared to normal software in that it doesnt all load from disk; some of it is preloaded into memory chips (ROM) installed in the system or on adapter cards. The BIOS in a PC comes from three possible sources: Motherboard ROM Adapter Card ROM (such as that found on a video card) Loaded into RAM from disk (device drivers)

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