An address bus is a
computer bus, used by
CPUs or
DMA-capable units for communicating the physical addresses of computer memory elements/locations that the requesting unit wants to access (read/write).The width of an address bus, along with the size of addressable memory elements, determines how much memory can be accessed. For example, a
16-bit wide address bus (commonly used in the
8-bit processors of the 1970s and early 1980s) reaches across 216 = 65,536 = 64
Ki memory locations, whereas a
32-bit address bus (common in
today's PC processors) can address 232 = 4,294,967,296 = 4
Gi locations.
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<
processor> The connections between the
CPU and memory which carry the
address from/to which the CPU wishes to read or write. The number of bits of address bus determines the maximum size of memory which the processor can access.
See also
data bus.
(1995-03-22)