Memory Bus

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What Does Memory Bus Mean?

The memory bus is a type of computer bus, usually in the form of a set of wires or conductors which connects electrical components and allow transfers of data and addresses from the main memory to the central processing unit (CPU) or a memory controller. It is part of a PC’s collection of transport buses that are used for high-speed data channeling and transferring of information to and from certain parts of the system. To reduce time delays, newly-designed memory buses are made to directly connect to dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips instead of passing through different controllers.

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Techopedia Explains Memory Bus

A memory bus is made up of two parts: the data bus and the address bus. The data bus is responsible for the transfer of information between the memory and the chipset. The wider a data bus is, the higher its performance since it can allow more data to pass through in the same amount of time; this is called data bandwidth.

The address bus communicates with the system on where specific information can be located or stored when data either enters or leaves the memory. The speed and delays of an action made in a computer system depends greatly on the address bus since it is the entity locating the information. Its width depicts the amount of system memory a processor can read or write into.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.