Bus (computing) in the context of Communication protocol

In electrical engineering, a transmission line is a specialized cable or other structure designed to conduct electromagnetic waves in a contained manner. The term applies when the conductors are long enough that the wave nature of the transmission must be taken into account. This applies especially to radio-frequency engineering because the short wavelengths mean that wave phenomena arise over very short distances (this can be as short as millimetres depending on frequency). However, the theory of transmission lines was historically developed to explain phenomena on very long telegraph lines, especially submarine telegraph cables.

Transmission lines are used for purposes such as connecting radio transmitters and receivers with their antennas (they are then called feed lines or feeders), distributing cable television signals, trunklines routing calls between telephone switching centres, computer network connections and high speed computer data buses. RF engineers commonly use short pieces of transmission line, usually in the form of printed planar transmission lines, arranged in certain patterns to build circuits such as filters. These circuits, known as distributed-element circuits, are an alternative to traditional circuits using discrete capacitors and inductors.

Coaxial cable, or coax (pronounced /ˈkoʊ.æks/), is a type of electrical cable consisting of an inner conductor surrounded by a concentric conducting shield, with the two separated by a dielectric (insulating material); many coaxial cables also have a protective outer sheath or jacket. The term coaxial refers to the inner conductor and the outer shield sharing a geometric axis.

Coaxial cable is a type of unbalanced transmission line, used to carry high-frequency unbalanced electrical signals with low losses. It is used in such applications as telephone trunk lines, broadband internet networking cables, high-speed computer data buses, cable television signals, and connecting radio transmitters and receivers to their antennas. It differs from other shielded cables because the dimensions of the cable and connectors are controlled to give a precise, constant conductor spacing, which is needed for it to function efficiently as a transmission line.

A desktop computer, often abbreviated as desktop, is a personal computer designed for regular use at a stationary location on or near a desk (as opposed to a portable computer) due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply, motherboard (a printed circuit board with a microprocessor as the central processing unit, memory, bus, certain peripherals and other electronic components), disk storage (usually one or more hard disk drives, solid-state drives, optical disc drives, and in early models floppy disk drives); a keyboard and mouse for input; and a monitor, speakers, and, often, a printer for output. The case may be oriented horizontally or vertically and placed either underneath, beside, or on top of a desk.

Desktop computers with their cases oriented vertically are referred to as towers. As the majority of cases offered since the mid 1990s are in this form factor, the term desktop has been retronymically used to refer to modern cases offered in the traditional horizontal orientation.

In computing, bit numbering is the convention used to identify the bit positions in a binary number. The bits can be those in a memory byte or word, or those of an internal CPU register or data bus.

In computer architecture, 8-bit integers or other data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers or data buses of that size. Memory addresses (and thus address buses) for 8-bit CPUs are generally larger than 8-bit, usually 16-bit. 8-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 8-bit microprocessors.

The term '8-bit' is also applied to the character sets that could be used on computers with 8-bit bytes, the best known being various forms of extended ASCII, including the ISO/IEC 8859 series of national character sets – especially Latin 1 for English and Western European languages.

In computer architecture, 16-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 16 bits (2 octets) wide. Also, 16-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors.

A 16-bit register can store 2 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 65,535 (2 − 1) for representation as an (unsigned) binary number, and −32,768 (−1 × 2) through 32,767 (2 − 1) for representation as two's complement. Since 2 is 65,536, a processor with 16-bit memory addresses can directly access 64 KiB (65,536 bytes) of byte-addressable memory. If a system uses segmentation with 16-bit segment offsets, more can be accessed.

An audio codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream (a codec) that encodes or decodes audio. In software, an audio codec is a computer program implementing an algorithm that compresses and decompresses digital audio data according to a given audio file or streaming media audio coding format. The objective of the algorithm is to represent the high-fidelity audio signal with a minimum number of bits while retaining quality. This can effectively reduce the storage space and the bandwidth required for transmission of the stored audio file. Most software codecs are implemented as libraries which interface to one or more multimedia players. Most modern audio compression algorithms are based on modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) coding and linear predictive coding (LPC).

In hardware, audio codec refers to a single device that encodes analog audio as digital signals and decodes digital back into analog. In other words, it contains both an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC) running off the same clock signal. This is used in sound cards that support both audio in and out, for instance. Hardware audio codecs send and receive digital data using buses such as AC'97, SoundWire, I²S, SPI, I²C, etc. Most commonly the digital data is linear PCM, and this is the only format that most codecs support, but some legacy codecs support other formats such as G.711 for telephony.

Lightning is a proprietary computer bus and power connector, created and designed by Apple Inc. It was introduced on September 12, 2012, in conjunction with the iPhone 5, to replace its predecessor, the 30-pin dock connector, and phased out during 2024–2025, concluding with the withdrawal of the iPhone 14 from sale.

The Lightning connector is used to connect legacy Apple mobile devices like iPhones, iPads, and iPods to host computers, external monitors, cameras, USB battery chargers, and other peripherals. Using 8 pins instead of 30, Lightning is much smaller than its predecessor. The Lightning connector is reversible. The plug is indented on each side to match up with corresponding points inside the receptacle to retain the connection.

The Neo Geo (Greek for 'New World'), stylized as NEO•GEO, is a video game platform released in 1990 by Japanese game company SNK Corporation. It was initially released in two ROM cartridge-based formats: an arcade system board (Multi Video System; MVS) and a home video game console (Advanced Entertainment System; AES). A CD-ROM-based home console iteration, the Neo Geo CD, was released in 1994. The arcade system can hold multiple cartridges that can be exchanged out, a unique feature that contrasted to the dedicated single-game arcade cabinets of its time, making it popular with arcade operators.

The Neo Geo was marketed as the first 24-bit system; its CPU is actually a 16/32-bit 68000 with an 8-bit Z80 coprocessor, while its GPU chipset has a 24-bit graphics data bus. It was a very powerful system when released, more so than any video game console at the time, and many arcade systems such as rival Capcom's CPS, which did not surpass it until the CP System II in 1993.

In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A computer that uses such a processor is a 64-bit computer.

From the software perspective, 64-bit computing means the use of machine code with 64-bit virtual memory addresses. However, not all 64-bit instruction sets support full 64-bit virtual memory addresses; x86-64 and AArch64, for example, support only 48 bits of virtual address, with the remaining 16 bits of the virtual address required to be all zeros (000...) or all ones (111...), and several 64-bit instruction sets support fewer than 64 bits of physical memory address.

The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit microprocessor chip released by Intel on June 8, 1978 after development began in early 1976. It was followed by the Intel 8088 in 1979, which was a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allowing the use of cheaper and fewer supporting ICs).

The 8086 gave rise to the x86 architecture, which eventually became Intel's most successful line of processors. On June 5, 2018, Intel released a limited-edition CPU celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Intel 8086, called the Intel Core i7-8086K.

A system bus is a single computer bus that connects the major components of a computer system,combining the functions of a data bus to carry information, an address bus to determine where it should be sent or read from, and a control bus to determine its operation. The technique was developed to reduce costs and improve modularity, and although popular in the 1970s and 1980s, more modern computers use a variety of separate buses adapted to more specific needs.

The system level bus (as distinct from a CPU's internal datapath busses) connects the CPU to memory and I/O devices.Typically a system level bus is designed for use as a backplane.

In computing, a peripheral bus is a computer bus designed to support computer peripherals like printers and hard drives. The term is generally used to refer to systems that offer support for a wide variety of devices, like Universal Serial Bus, as opposed to those that are dedicated to specific types of hardware. Serial AT Attachment, or SATA is designed and optimized for communication with mass storage devices.

This usage is not universal, some definitions of peripheral bus include any bus that is not a system bus, including examples like PCI. Others treat PCI and similar systems as a third category, the expansion bus.