System Bus

The computer System Bus is not a long yellow vehicle with wheels on it, however it is similar to the school bus we described.  The system bus is the method by which data is communicated between all the internal pieces of a computer.  The system bus connects the processor to the RAM, to the hard drive, to the video processor, to the I/O drives, and to all the other components of your computer. 

There are three types of bus in a computer, although they all flow together. There is the data bus that allows the data to flow back-and-forth between devices. There is the address bus which tells devices where the data, that is flowing on the data bus, should go or is coming from. Finally there is the control bus which coordinates activity between various devices to prevent collisions. Collisions is a term used to identify corruption of data resulting from simultaneous use of the data and/or address bus.

High level abstraction of System Bus