motherboard - Understanding Bus Architecture Terminology
2014-07
Sly
I've read several books which talked about bus architectures. Each one uses a myriad of terms. Can someone help sort these out for me?
system bus external data bus internal data bus front-side bus back-side bus
Some books says that everything travels on the external data bus, whereas others include the internal data bus.
Is there one big name for all the buses combined, and then they are divided into the other buses (memory, pci, fsb, etc.)?
Where does the system clock come into all of this?
JcMaco
I can't seem to figure this out from the related wikipedia pages:
quack quixote
See Wikipedia's Modified Harvard Architecture page on Harvard or von Neumann?:
Three characteristics of Harvard architecture machines may be used to distinguish them from von Neumann machines:
Instruction and data memories occupy different address spaces. [...]
Instruction and data memories have separate hardware pathways to the central processing unit (CPU). [...]
Instruction and data memories are implemented in different ways. [...]
The last point is because of the original Harvard machine (stored instructions on paper tape, data in electromechanical counters), but is applicable to modern pure-Harvard chips like the PIC microcontroller, which use non-volatile memory to store instructions but volatile memory for RAM.
Now, given those distinguishing characteristics, how would you categorize the MIPS?
Fopedush
Modern processors are based on the Von Neumann architecture, including x86, x64, and MIPS. As far as I know, the Harvard architecture is not used in mainstream CPUs.
Am1rr3zA
as I study before MIPS structure in computer architecture , MIPs based on Von Neumann