Describing bus lines including bus width, system bus, expansion bus, and three types of buses.

Main board or motherboard
• Controls communications
• Components connect to the system board
• Data path
• Traffic monitor
System Board
System Board Components
• Sockets
– Connection
point for
chips
• Chips
– Tiny circuit boards etched onto squares of silicon
– Silicon chip, semiconductor, or integrated circuit
– Mounted on carrier packages

System Board Components
• Slots
– Provide a connection point for specialized cards or
circuit boards
• Bus lines
– Provide pathways that support communication
among the various electronic components
Microprocessor Chips
• Chip capacities expressed in word size
• Word
– The number of bits that can be processed at one
time
– 64-bit standard
• Clock Speed
– Processing speed
– The number of times the CPU fetches and
processes data or instructions in a second
– Multi-Core Chip
• Two separate and independent CPUs
• Parallel Processing
• Windows 8 and Mac OS X
Expansion Slots and Cards
• Advanced graphics cards
• Sound cards
• Network interface cards (NIC)
• Wireless network cards
• Plug and Play
Bus Lines
• Also known as a bus
• Connect parts of the CPU to each other
• Pathway for bits
• Bus width
– Number of bits that
can travel at once
• Two basic categories
– System buses
– Expansion buses
Connects the CPU to other components on
the system board, including expansion slots
• Universal Serial Bus (USB)
– Connects external USB devices onto the USB bus
• FireWire
– Audio and video equipment
• PCI Express (PCIe)
– Single dedicated path for each connected device
Cables
• Used to connect external devices to the
system unit via the ports
• One end of the cable is attached to the device
and the other end has a connector that is
attached to a matching connector on the port