ABSTRACT
The bus is the most popular communication pathway among the various components of a computer system. The distinguishing feature of the bus is that it consists of a single set of shared communication links to which many components can be attached. The bus is not only a very cost-effective means of connecting various components together, but also is very versatile in that new components can be added easily. Furthermore, the bus has a broadcasting capability which can be extremely useful. The downside of the shared communication links is that they allow only one communication to occur at a time and the bandwidth does not scale with the number of components attached. Nevertheless, the bus is very popular because there are many situations where several components need to be connected together but they need not all transmit at the same time. This kind of requirement maps naturally onto a bus, allowing a very costeffective solution. However, there are cases where the bus does become a communication bottleneck. In such cases, very aggressive bus designs have been attempted, but there comes a point where the fundamental characteristic of the bus cannot be overcome and more expensive solutions such as point-to-point links have to be used.
