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76-606: In addition to double pumping the data bus as in DDR SDRAM (transferring data on the rising and falling edges of the bus clock signal ), DDR2 allows higher bus speed and requires lower power by running the internal clock at half the speed of the data bus. The two factors combine to produce a total of four data transfers per internal clock cycle. Since the DDR2 internal clock runs at half the DDR external clock rate, DDR2 memory operating at

152-576: A computer , or between computers. This expression covers all related hardware components (wire, optical fiber , etc.) and software , including communication protocols . In most traditional computer architectures , the CPU and main memory tend to be tightly coupled, with the internal bus connecting the two being known as the system bus . In systems that include a cache , CPUs use high-performance system buses that operate at speeds greater than memory to communicate with memory. The internal bus (also known as

228-499: A multidrop (electrical parallel) or daisy chain topology, or connected by switched hubs. Many modern CPUs also feature a second set of pins similar to those for communicating with memory—but able to operate with different speeds and protocols—to ensure that peripherals do not slow overall system performance. CPUs can also feature smart controllers to place the data directly in memory, a concept known as direct memory access . Low-performance bus systems have also been developed, such as

304-730: A bidirectional data bus, re-using the same wires for input and output at different times. Some processors use a dedicated wire for each bit of the address bus, data bus, and the control bus. For example, the 64-pin STEbus is composed of 8 physical wires dedicated to the 8-bit data bus, 20 physical wires dedicated to the 20-bit address bus, 21 physical wires dedicated to the control bus, and 15 physical wires dedicated to various power buses. Bus multiplexing requires fewer wires, which reduces costs in many early microprocessors and DRAM chips. One common multiplexing scheme, address multiplexing , has already been mentioned. Another multiplexing scheme re-uses

380-399: A bus that is 64 data bits wide, and since a byte comprises 8 bits, this equates to 8 bytes of data per transfer. In addition to bandwidth and capacity variants, modules can: Note: DDR2 DIMMs are not backward compatible with DDR DIMMs. The notch on DDR2 DIMMs is in a different position from DDR DIMMs, and the pin density is higher than DDR DIMMs in desktops. DDR2 is a 240-pin module, DDR

456-726: A card plugged into the bus, which is why computers have so many slots on the bus. But through the 1980s and 1990s, new systems like SCSI and IDE were introduced to serve this need, leaving most slots in modern systems empty. Today there are likely to be about five different buses in the typical machine, supporting various devices. "Third generation" buses have been emerging into the market since about 2001, including HyperTransport and InfiniBand . They also tend to be very flexible in terms of their physical connections, allowing them to be used both as internal buses, as well as connecting different machines together. This can lead to complex problems when trying to service different requests, so much of

532-479: A decided nomenclature for each of these speeds for each type. DIMMs based on Single Data Rate (SDR) DRAM have the same bus frequency for data, address and control lines. DIMMs based on Double Data Rate (DDR) DRAM have data but not the strobe at double the rate of the clock; this is achieved by clocking on both the rising and falling edge of the data strobes. Power consumption and voltage gradually became lower with each generation of DDR-based DIMMs. Another influence

608-621: A drop in operating voltage (1.8 V compared to DDR's 2.5 V). The lower memory clock frequency may also enable power reductions in applications that do not require the highest available data rates. According to JEDEC the maximum recommended voltage is 1.9 volts and should be considered the absolute maximum when memory stability is an issue (such as in servers or other mission critical devices). In addition, JEDEC states that memory modules must withstand up to 2.3 volts before incurring permanent damage (although they may not actually function correctly at that level). For use in computers, DDR2 SDRAM

684-413: A higher-than-standard data rate whilst others simply round up for the name. Note: DDR2-xxx denotes data transfer rate, and describes raw DDR chips, whereas PC2-xxxx denotes theoretical bandwidth (with the last two digits truncated), and is used to describe assembled DIMMs. Bandwidth is calculated by taking transfers per second and multiplying by eight. This is because DDR2 memory modules transfer data on

760-428: A multiple of 9 instead of a multiple of 8 chips. Sometimes memory modules are designed with two or more independent sets of DRAM chips connected to the same address and data buses; each such set is called a rank . Ranks that share the same slot, only one rank may be accessed at any given time; it is specified by activating the corresponding rank's chip select (CS) signal. The other ranks on the module are deactivated for

836-466: A passive backplane connected directly or through buffer amplifiers to the pins of the CPU . Memory and other devices would be added to the bus using the same address and data pins as the CPU itself used, connected in parallel. Communication was controlled by the CPU, which read and wrote data from the devices as if they are blocks of memory, using the same instructions, all timed by a central clock controlling

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912-506: A serial bus inherently has no timing skew or crosstalk. USB , FireWire , and Serial ATA are examples of this. Multidrop connections do not work well for fast serial buses, so most modern serial buses use daisy-chain or hub designs. The transition from parallel to serial buses was allowed by Moore's law which allowed for the incorporation of SerDes in integrated circuits which are used in computers. Network connections such as Ethernet are not generally regarded as buses, although

988-404: A similar architecture to multicomputers , but which communicate by buses instead of networks, the system bus is known as a front-side bus . In such systems, the expansion bus may not share any architecture with their host CPUs, instead supporting many different CPUs, as is the case with PCI . While the term " peripheral bus " is sometimes used to refer to all other buses apart from the system bus,

1064-449: A single source LRI/LRU or, as with ARINC 629, MIL-STD-1553B, and STANAG 3910, be duplex , allow all the connected LRI/LRUs to act, at different times ( half duplex ), as transmitters and receivers of data. The frequency or the speed of a bus is measured in Hz such as MHz and determines how many clock cycles there are per second; there can be one or more data transfers per clock cycle. If there

1140-433: A unified system bus . In this case, a single mechanical and electrical system can be used to connect together many of the system components, or in some cases, all of them. Later computer programs began to share memory common to several CPUs. Access to this memory bus had to be prioritized, as well. The simple way to prioritize interrupts or bus access was with a daisy chain . In this case signals will naturally flow through

1216-400: Is 72 bits wide, so the memory controller only addresses one side at a time (the two-sided module is dual-ranked). The above example applies to ECC memory that stores 72 bits instead of the more common 64. There would also be one extra chip per group of eight, which is not counted. For various technologies, there are certain bus and device clock frequencies that are standardized; there is also

1292-562: Is 8GB, but chipset support and availability for those DIMMs is sparse and more common 2GB per DIMM are used. DDR2 SDRAM was first produced by Samsung in 2001. In 2003, the JEDEC standards organization presented Samsung with its Technical Recognition Award for the company's efforts in developing and standardizing DDR2. DDR2 was officially introduced in the second quarter of 2003 at two initial clock rates: 200 MHz (referred to as PC2-3200) and 266 MHz (PC2-4200). Both performed worse than

1368-623: Is Column Access Strobe (CAS) latency, or CL, which affects memory access speed. This is the delay time between the READ command and the moment data is available. See main article CAS/CL . Several form factors are commonly used in DIMMs. Single Data Rate Synchronous DRAM (SDR SDRAM) DIMMs were primarily manufactured in 1.5 inches (38 mm) and 1.7 inches (43 mm) heights. When 1U rackmount servers started becoming popular, these form factor registered DIMMs had to plug into angled DIMM sockets to fit in

1444-572: Is a 184-pin module. Notebooks have 200-pin SO-DIMMs for DDR and DDR2; however, the notch on DDR2 modules is in a slightly different position than on DDR modules. Higher-speed DDR2 DIMMs can be mixed with lower-speed DDR2 DIMMs, although the memory controller will operate all DIMMs at same speed as the lowest-speed DIMM present. GDDR2, a form of GDDR SDRAM , was developed by Samsung and introduced in July 2002. The first commercial product to claim using

1520-468: Is a popular type of memory module used in computers. It is a printed circuit board with one or both sides (front and back) holding DRAM chips and pins . The vast majority of DIMMs are manufactured in compliance with JEDEC memory standards , although there are proprietary DIMMs. DIMMs come in a variety of speeds and capacities, and are generally one of two lengths: PC, which are 133.35 mm (5.25 in), and laptop ( SO-DIMM ), which are about half

1596-412: Is a single transfer per clock cycle it is known as Single Data Rate (SDR), and if there are two transfers per clock cycle it is known as Double Data Rate (DDR) although the use of signalling other than SDR is uncommon outside of RAM. An example of this is PCIe which uses SDR. Within each data transfer there can be multiple bits of data. This is described as the width of a bus which is the number of bits

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1672-605: Is a smaller alternative to a DIMM, being roughly half the physical size of a regular DIMM. The first SODIMMs had 72 pins and were introduced by JEDEC in 1997. Before its introduction, many laptops would use proprietary RAM modules which were expensive and hard to find. SO-DIMMs are often used in computers that have limited space, which include laptops , notebook computers , small-footprint personal computers such as those based on Nano-ITX motherboards , high-end upgradable office printers , and networking hardware such as routers and NAS devices. They are usually available with

1748-543: Is an open standard interconnect for high-speed CPU -to-device and CPU-to-memory, designed to accelerate next-generation data center performance. Many field buses are serial data buses (not to be confused with the parallel "data bus" section of a system bus or expansion card ), several of which use the RS-485 electrical characteristics and then specify their own protocol and connector: Other serial buses include: DIMM A DIMM ( Dual In-Line Memory Module )

1824-424: Is greatly increased as a trade-off. The DDR2 prefetch buffer is four bits deep, whereas it is two bits deep for DDR. While DDR SDRAM has typical read latencies of between two and three bus cycles, DDR2 may have read latencies between three and nine cycles, although the typical range is between four and six. Thus, DDR2 memory must be operated at twice the data rate to achieve the same latency. Another cost of

1900-475: Is provided by the bus‍—‌is not the case in many avionic systems , where data connections such as ARINC 429 , ARINC 629 , MIL-STD-1553B (STANAG 3838), and EFABus ( STANAG 3910 ) are commonly referred to as “data buses” or, sometimes, "databuses". Such avionic data buses are usually characterized by having several equipments or Line Replaceable Items/Units (LRI/LRUs) connected to a common, shared media . They may, as with ARINC 429, be simplex , i.e. have

1976-424: Is sent on the data bus). The width of the address bus determines the amount of memory a system can address. For example, a system with a 32-bit address bus can address 2 (4,294,967,296) memory locations. If each memory location holds one byte, the addressable memory space is 4 GB. Early processors used a wire for each bit of the address width. For example, a 16-bit address bus had 16 physical wires making up

2052-511: Is supplied in DIMMs with 240 pins and a single locating notch. Laptop DDR2 SO-DIMMs have 200 pins and often come identified by an additional S in their designation. DIMMs are identified by their peak transfer capacity (often called bandwidth). * Some manufacturers label their DDR2 modules as PC2-4300, PC2-5400 or PC2-8600 instead of the respective names suggested by JEDEC. At least one manufacturer has reported this reflects successful testing at

2128-491: Is the case, for instance, with the VESA Local Bus which lacks the two least significant bits, limiting this bus to aligned 32-bit transfers. Historically, there were also some examples of computers which were only able to address words -- word machines . The memory bus is the bus which connects the main memory to the memory controller in computer systems . Originally, general-purpose buses like VMEbus and

2204-497: Is the increase in prefetch length. In DDR SDRAM, the prefetch length was two bits for every bit in a word; whereas it is four bits in DDR2 SDRAM. During an access, four bits were read or written to or from a four-bit-deep prefetch queue. This queue received or transmitted its data over the data bus in two data bus clock cycles (each clock cycle transferred two bits of data). Increasing the prefetch length allowed DDR2 SDRAM to double

2280-534: Is the voltage key position, which represents 5.0 V, 3.3 V, and RFU DIMM types (order is the same as above). DDR , DDR2 , DDR3 , DDR4 and DDR5 all have different pin counts and/or different notch positions, and none of them are forward compatible or backward compatible . DDR5 SDRAM is the most recent type of DDR memory and has been in use since 2020. A DIMM's capacity and other operational parameters may be identified with serial presence detect (SPD), an additional chip which contains information about

2356-473: The IBM PC , although similar physical architecture can be employed, instructions to access peripherals ( in and out ) and memory ( mov and others) have not been made uniform at all, and still generate distinct CPU signals, that could be used to implement a separate I/O bus. These simple bus systems had a serious drawback when used for general-purpose computers. All the equipment on the bus had to talk at

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2432-889: The S-100 bus were used, but to reduce latency , modern memory buses are designed to connect directly to DRAM chips, and thus are designed by chip standards bodies such as JEDEC . Examples are the various generations of SDRAM , and serial point-to-point buses like SLDRAM and RDRAM . An exception is the Fully Buffered DIMM which, despite being carefully designed to minimize the effect, has been criticized for its higher latency. Buses can be parallel buses , which carry data words in parallel on multiple wires, or serial buses , which carry data in bit-serial form. The addition of extra power and control connections, differential drivers , and data connections in each direction usually means that most serial buses have more conductors than

2508-562: The Universal Serial Bus (USB). Given technological changes, the classical terms "system", "expansion" and "peripheral" no longer have the same connotations. Other common categorization systems are based on the bus's primary role, connecting devices internally or externally. However, many common modern bus systems can be used for both. SATA and the associated eSATA are one example of a system that would formerly be described as internal, while certain automotive applications use

2584-557: The "DDR2" technology was the Nvidia GeForce FX 5800 graphics card. However, this GDDR2 memory used on graphics cards is not DDR2 per se, but rather an early midpoint between DDR and DDR2 technologies. Using "DDR2" to refer to GDDR2 is a colloquial misnomer . In particular, the performance-enhancing doubling of the I/O clock rate is missing. It had severe overheating issues due to the nominal DDR voltages. ATI has since designed

2660-469: The "expansion bus" has also been used to describe a third category of buses separate from the peripheral bus, which includes bus systems like PCI. Early computer buses were parallel electrical wires with multiple hardware connections, but the term is now used for any physical arrangement that provides the same logical function as a parallel electrical busbar . Modern computer buses can use both parallel and bit serial connections, and can be wired in either

2736-404: The 1.75 inches (44 mm) high box. To alleviate this issue, the next standards of DDR DIMMs were created with a "low profile" (LP) height of around 1.2 inches (30 mm). These fit into vertical DIMM sockets for a 1U platform. With the advent of blade servers , angled slots have once again become common in order to accommodate LP form factor DIMMs in these space-constrained boxes. This led to

2812-461: The DRAM chips in bits. High-capacity DIMMs such as 256 GB DIMMs can have up to 19 chips per side. In the case of "×4" registered DIMMs, the data width per side is 36 bits; therefore, the memory controller (which requires 72 bits) needs to address both sides at the same time to read or write the data it needs. In this case, the two-sided module is single-ranked. For "×8" registered DIMMs, each side

2888-569: The GDDR technology further into GDDR3 , which is based on DDR2 SDRAM, though with several additions suited for graphics cards. GDDR3 was commonly used in graphics cards and some tablet PCs. However, further confusion has been added to the mix with the appearance of budget and mid-range graphics cards which claim to use "GDDR2". These cards actually use standard DDR2 chips designed for use as main system memory although operating with higher latencies to achieve higher clock rates. These chips cannot achieve

2964-472: The IEEE "Superbus" study group, the open microprocessor initiative (OMI), the open microsystems initiative (OMI), the "Gang of Nine" that developed EISA , etc. Early computer buses were bundles of wire that attached computer memory and peripherals. Anecdotally termed the " digit trunk " in the early Australian CSIRAC computer, they were named after electrical power buses, or busbars . Almost always, there

3040-549: The address bus pins as the data bus pins, an approach used by conventional PCI and the 8086 . The various "serial buses" can be seen as the ultimate limit of multiplexing, sending each of the address bits and each of the data bits, one at a time, through a single pin (or a single differential pair). Over time, several groups of people worked on various computer bus standards, including the IEEE Bus Architecture Standards Committee (BASC),

3116-489: The bits themselves, and allows for an increase in data transfer speed without increasing the frequency of the bus. The effective or real data transfer speed/rate may be lower due to the use of encoding that also allows for error correction such as 128/130b (b for bit) encoding. The data transfer speed is also known as the bandwidth. The simplest system bus has completely separate input data lines, output data lines, and address lines. To reduce cost, most microcomputers have

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3192-493: The bus can transfer per clock cycle and can be synonymous with the number of physical electrical conductors the bus has if each conductor transfers one bit at a time. The data rate in bits per second can be obtained by multiplying the number of bits per clock cycle times the frequency times the number of transfers per clock cycle. Alternatively a bus such as PCIe can use modulation or encoding such as PAM4 which groups 2 bits into symbols which are then transferred instead of

3268-409: The bus had to talk at the same speed. While the CPU was now isolated and could increase speed, CPUs and memory continued to increase in speed much faster than the buses they talked to. The result was that the bus speeds were now much slower than what a modern system needed, and the machines were left starved for data. A particularly common example of this problem was that video cards quickly outran even

3344-519: The bus in physical or logical order, eliminating the need for complex scheduling. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) further reduced cost for mass-produced minicomputers , and mapped peripherals into the memory bus, so that the input and output devices appeared to be memory locations. This was implemented in the Unibus of the PDP-11 around 1969. Early microcomputer bus systems were essentially

3420-626: The bus supplied power, but often use a separate power source. This distinction is exemplified by a telephone system with a connected modem , where the RJ11 connection and associated modulated signalling scheme is not considered a bus, and is analogous to an Ethernet connection. A phone line connection scheme is not considered to be a bus with respect to signals, but the Central Office uses buses with cross-bar switches for connections between phones. However, this distinction‍—‌that power

3496-461: The bus. As the buses became wider and lengthier, this approach became expensive in terms of the number of chip pins and board traces. Beginning with the Mostek 4096 DRAM , address multiplexing implemented with multiplexers became common. In a multiplexed address scheme, the address is sent in two equal parts on alternate bus cycles. This halves the number of address bus signals required to connect to

3572-431: The cards to be much more complex. These buses also often addressed speed issues by being "bigger" in terms of the size of the data path, moving from 8-bit parallel buses in the first generation, to 16 or 32-bit in the second, as well as adding software setup (now standardised as Plug-n-play ) to supplant or replace the jumpers. However, these newer systems shared one quality with their earlier cousins, in that everyone on

3648-455: The clock rates of GDDR3 but are inexpensive and fast enough to be used as memory on mid-range cards. Note**: JEDEC website requires registration ($ 2,500 membership) for viewing or downloading of these documents: http://www.jedec.org/standards-documents Bus (computing) In computer architecture , a bus (historically also called data highway or databus ) is a communication system that transfers data between components inside

3724-491: The computer into two "worlds", the CPU and memory on one side, and the various devices on the other. A bus controller accepted data from the CPU side to be moved to the peripherals side, thus shifting the communications protocol burden from the CPU itself. This allowed the CPU and memory side to evolve separately from the device bus, or just "bus". Devices on the bus could talk to each other with no CPU intervention. This led to much better "real world" performance, but also required

3800-936: The development of the Very Low Profile (VLP) form factor DIMM with a height of around 0.72 inches (18 mm). The DDR3 JEDEC standard for VLP DIMM height is around 0.740 inches (18.8 mm). These will fit vertically in ATCA systems. Full-height 240-pin DDR2 and DDR3 DIMMs are all specified at a height of around 1.18 inches (30 mm) by standards set by JEDEC. These form factors include 240-pin DIMM, SO-DIMM, Mini-DIMM and Micro-DIMM. Full-height 288-pin DDR4 DIMMs are slightly taller than their DDR3 counterparts at 1.23 inches (31 mm). Similarly, VLP DDR4 DIMMs are also marginally taller than their DDR3 equivalent at nearly 0.74 inches (19 mm). As of Q2 2017, Asus has had

3876-489: The difference is largely conceptual rather than practical. An attribute generally used to characterize a bus is that power is provided by the bus for the connected hardware. This emphasizes the busbar origins of bus architecture as supplying switched or distributed power. This excludes, as buses, schemes such as serial RS-232 , parallel Centronics , IEEE 1284 interfaces and Ethernet, since these devices also needed separate power supplies. Universal Serial Bus devices may use

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3952-415: The duration of the operation by having their corresponding CS signals deactivated. DIMMs are currently being commonly manufactured with up to four ranks per module. Consumer DIMM vendors have recently begun to distinguish between single and dual ranked DIMMs. After a memory word is fetched, the memory is typically inaccessible for an extended period of time while the sense amplifiers are charged for access of

4028-400: The first half of the memory address or the second half. Accessing an individual byte frequently requires reading or writing the full bus width (a word ) at once. In these instances the least significant bits of the address bus may not even be implemented - it is instead the responsibility of the controlling device to isolate the individual byte required from the complete word transmitted. This

4104-492: The increased bandwidth is the requirement that the chips are packaged in a more expensive and difficult to assemble BGA package as compared to the TSSOP package of the previous memory generations such as DDR SDRAM and SDR SDRAM . This packaging change was necessary to maintain signal integrity at higher bus speeds. Power savings are achieved primarily due to an improved manufacturing process through die shrinkage, resulting in

4180-635: The input and output of a given bus. IBM introduced these on the IBM 709 in 1958, and they became a common feature of their platforms. Other high-performance vendors like Control Data Corporation implemented similar designs. Generally, the channel controllers would do their best to run all of the bus operations internally, moving data when the CPU was known to be busy elsewhere if possible, and only using interrupts when necessary. This greatly reduced CPU load, and provided better overall system performance. To provide modularity, memory and I/O buses can be combined into

4256-466: The internal data bus, memory bus or system bus ) connects internal components of a computer to the mother board. Local buses connect the CPU and memory to the expansion bus , which in turn connects the computer to peripherals. Bus systems such as the SATA ports in modern computers support multiple peripherals, allowing multiple hard drives to be connected without an expansion card . In systems that have

4332-573: The length at 67.60 mm (2.66 in). DIMMs (Dual In-line Memory Module) were a 1990s upgrade for SIMMs (Single In-line Memory Modules) as Intel P5 -based Pentium processors began to gain market share. The Pentium had a 64-bit bus width, which would require SIMMs installed in matched pairs in order to populate the data bus. The processor would then access the two SIMMs in parallel. DIMMs were introduced to eliminate this disadvantage. The contacts on SIMMs on both sides are redundant, while DIMMs have separate electrical contacts on each side of

4408-422: The manufacturer. Such chips draw significantly more power than slower-clocked chips, but usually offered little or no improvement in real-world performance, unless bandwidth dependent tasks such as integrated graphics rendering are used. DDR2 started to become competitive against the older DDR standard by the end of 2004, as modules with lower latencies became available. The key difference between DDR2 and DDR SDRAM

4484-401: The memory. For example, a 32-bit address bus can be implemented by using 16 lines and sending the first half of the memory address, immediately followed by the second half memory address. Typically two additional pins in the control bus – row-address strobe (RAS) and column-address strobe (CAS) – are used to tell the DRAM whether the address bus is currently sending

4560-446: The minimum of one used in 1-Wire and UNI/O . As data rates increase, the problems of timing skew , power consumption, electromagnetic interference and crosstalk across parallel buses become more and more difficult to circumvent. One partial solution to this problem has been to double pump the bus. Often, a serial bus can be operated at higher overall data rates than a parallel bus, despite having fewer electrical connections, because

4636-577: The module type and timing for the memory controller to be configured correctly. The SPD EEPROM connects to the System Management Bus and may also contain thermal sensors ( TS-on-DIMM ). ECC DIMMs are those that have extra data bits which can be used by the system memory controller to detect and correct errors. There are numerous ECC schemes, but perhaps the most common is Single Error Correct, Double Error Detect ( SECDED ) which uses an extra byte per 64-bit word. ECC modules usually carry

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4712-644: The module. This allowed them to double the SIMMs 32-bit data path into a 64-bit data path. The name "DIMM" was chosen as an acronym for Dual In-line Memory Module symbolizing the split in the contacts of a SIMM into two independent rows. Many enhancements have occurred to the modules in the intervening years, but the word "DIMM" has remained as one of the generic terms for a computer memory module. There are numerous DIMM variants, employing different pin-counts: A SO-DIMM (pronounced "so-dimm" / ˈ s oʊ d ɪ m / , also spelled " SODIMM ") or small outline DIMM ,

4788-401: The newer bus systems like PCI , and computers began to include AGP just to drive the video card. By 2004 AGP was outgrown again by high-end video cards and other peripherals and has been replaced by the new PCI Express bus. An increasing number of external devices started employing their own bus systems as well. When disk drives were first introduced, they would be added to the machine with

4864-472: The next cell. By interleaving the memory (e.g. cells 0, 4, 8, etc. are stored together in one rank), sequential memory accesses can be performed more rapidly because sense amplifiers have 3 cycles of idle time for recharging, between accesses. DIMMs are often referred to as "single-sided" or " double-sided " to describe whether the DRAM chips are located on one or both sides of the module's printed circuit board (PCB). However, these terms may cause confusion, as

4940-404: The original DDR specification due to higher latency, which made total access times longer. However, the original DDR technology tops out at a clock rate around 200 MHz (400 MT/s). Higher performance DDR chips exist, but JEDEC has stated that they will not be standardized. These chips are mostly standard DDR chips that have been tested and rated to be capable of operation at higher clock rates by

5016-404: The physical layout of the chips does not necessarily relate to how they are logically organized or accessed. JEDEC decided that the terms "dual-sided", "double-sided", or "dual-banked" were not correct when applied to registered DIMMs (RDIMMs). Most DIMMs are built using "×4" ("by four") or "×8" ("by eight") memory chips with up to nine chips per side; "×4" and "×8" refer to the data width of

5092-441: The primarily external IEEE 1394 in a fashion more similar to a system bus. Other examples, like InfiniBand and I²C were designed from the start to be used both internally and externally. An address bus is a bus that is used to specify a physical address . When a processor or DMA -enabled device needs to read or write to a memory location, it specifies that memory location on the address bus (the value to be read or written

5168-484: The program attempted to perform those other tasks, it might take too long for the program to check again, resulting in loss of data. Engineers thus arranged for the peripherals to interrupt the CPU. The interrupts had to be prioritized, because the CPU can only execute code for one peripheral at a time, and some devices are more time-critical than others. High-end systems introduced the idea of channel controllers , which were essentially small computers dedicated to handling

5244-398: The rate at which data could be transferred over the data bus without a corresponding doubling in the rate at which the DRAM array could be accessed. DDR2 SDRAM was designed with such a scheme to avoid an excessive increase in power consumption. DDR2's bus frequency is boosted by electrical interface improvements, on-die termination , prefetch buffers and off-chip drivers. However, latency

5320-429: The same external data bus clock rate as DDR results in DDR2 being able to provide the same bandwidth but with better latency . Alternatively, DDR2 memory operating at twice the external data bus clock rate as DDR may provide twice the bandwidth with the same latency. The best-rated DDR2 memory modules are at least twice as fast as the best-rated DDR memory modules. The maximum capacity on commercially available DDR2 DIMMs

5396-436: The same size data path and speed ratings of the regular DIMMs though normally with smaller capacities. On the bottom edge of 168-pin DIMMs there are two notches, and the location of each notch determines a particular feature of the module. The first notch is the DRAM key position, which represents RFU (reserved future use), registered , and unbuffered DIMM types (left, middle and right position, respectively). The second notch

5472-420: The same speed, as it shared a single clock. Increasing the speed of the CPU becomes harder, because the speed of all the devices must increase as well. When it is not practical or economical to have all devices as fast as the CPU, the CPU must either enter a wait state , or work at a slower clock frequency temporarily, to talk to other devices in the computer. While acceptable in embedded systems , this problem

5548-522: The speed of the CPU. Still, devices interrupted the CPU by signaling on separate CPU pins. For instance, a disk drive controller would signal the CPU that new data was ready to be read, at which point the CPU would move the data by reading the "memory location" that corresponded to the disk drive. Almost all early microcomputers were built in this fashion, starting with the S-100 bus in the Altair 8800 computer system. In some instances, most notably in

5624-522: The work on these systems concerns software design, as opposed to the hardware itself. In general, these third generation buses tend to look more like a network than the original concept of a bus, with a higher protocol overhead needed than early systems, while also allowing multiple devices to use the bus at once. Buses such as Wishbone have been developed by the open source hardware movement in an attempt to further remove legal and patent constraints from computer design. The Compute Express Link (CXL)

5700-441: Was not tolerated for long in general-purpose, user-expandable computers. Such bus systems are also difficult to configure when constructed from common off-the-shelf equipment. Typically each added expansion card requires many jumpers in order to set memory addresses, I/O addresses, interrupt priorities, and interrupt numbers. "Second generation" bus systems like NuBus addressed some of these problems. They typically separated

5776-402: Was one bus for memory, and one or more separate buses for peripherals. These were accessed by separate instructions, with completely different timings and protocols. One of the first complications was the use of interrupts . Early computer programs performed I/O by waiting in a loop for the peripheral to become ready. This was a waste of time for programs that had other tasks to do. Also, if

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