meaning of: data bus, address bus, control bus

what is data bus? In computer architecture, a bus is a subsystem that transfers data between computer components inside a computer or between computers. Unlike a point-to-point connection, a bus can logically connect several peripherals over the same set of wires. Each bus defines its set of connectors to physically plug devices, cards or cables together. Early computer buses were literally parallel electrical buses with multiple connections, but the term is now used for any physical arrangement that provides the same logical functionality as a parallel electrical bus. Modern computer buses can use both parallel and bit-serial connections, and can be wired in either a multidrop (electrical parallel) or daisy chain topology, or connected by switched hubs, as in the case of USB. Address Bus An address bus is a computer bus, controlled by CPUs or DMA-capable peripherals for specifying the physical addresses of computer memory elements that the requesting unit wants to access (read or write). The width of an address bus, along with the size of addressable memory elements, generally determines how much memory can be directly accessed. For example, a 16-bit wide address bus (commonly used in the 8-bit processors of the 1970s and early 1980s) reaches across 216 (65,536) memory locations , whereas a 32-bit address bus (common in PC processors as of 2004) can address 232 (4,294,967,296) locations. Some microprocessors, such as the Digital/Compaq Alpha 21264 and Alpha 21364 have an address bus that is narrower than the amount of memory they can address. The address bus is clocked faster than the system or memory bus, enabling it to transfer an address in the same amount of time as an address bus of the same width as the address. In most microcomputers such addressable "locations" are 8-bit bytes, conceptually at least. In such case the above examples translate to 64 kilobytes (KB) and 4 gigabytes (GB) respectively. However, it should be noted that accessing an individual byte frequently requires reading or writing the full bus width (a word) at once. In these instances the least significant bits of the address bus may not even be implemented - it is instead the responsibility of the controlling device to isolate the individual byte required from the complete word transmitted. This is the case, for instance, with the VESA Local Bus which lacks the two least significant bits, limiting this bus to aligned 32 bit transfers. Historically, there were also some examples of computers which were only able to address larger words, such as 36 or 48 bits long. Control Bus A control bus is (part of) a computer bus, used by CPUs for communicating with other devices within the computer. While the address bus carries the information on which device the CPU is communicating with and the data bus carries the actual data being processed, the control bus carries commands from the CPU and returns status signals from the devices, for example if the data is being read or written to the device the appropriate line (read or write) will be active (logic zero).