I have been studying buses used in communication systems. From what I read at Wikipedia,
"In computer architecture, a bus (from the Latin omnibus, meaning "for
all") is a communication system that transfers data between components
inside a computer, or between computers. This expression covers all
related hardware components (wire, optical fiber, etc.) and software,
including communication protocol."
Does that mean both a wire and a bus is the same thing? What feature makes the bus totally different from a normal wire in the first place?
Best Answer
A wire can be a bus if it is a serial link carrying many individual pieces of information. More usually, a bus is regarded as a collection of wires that transport digital information from A to B. 64 bit processors (PCs etc.) have a 64 bit-wide bus between the CPU and their memory chips and possibly to other devices.
It doesn't have to be inside a computer of course - anything that is transmitting information from A to B will use some form of wire or collection of wires for achieving those aims.
What differentiates a wire as not being a bus is that it only carries one coherent "entity" such as power or a microphone signal or is connected to an on/off switch or a guitar or a speaker. A bus is usually digital.