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While all components of the PC work under the control of the processor, it is the collection of wires called the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus that link these components to the CPU.
The PCI allows the data to be exchanged in the form of bits and bytes. Information travels between the process and system components when the processor: |
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- Reads program code from RAM;
- Writes software-controlled data to the VDO RAM in order to alter the screen image;
- Reads data from the hard disk drive controller;
- Writes data to the sound system in order to play a note; or
- Communicates with an expansion card or PC card.
Just like the processor, the PCI bus has its own clock speed, with which all connected components are synchronised. The faster the bus clock speed, the greater the amount of information that can be
transferred over the bus in a given time.
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