Bus cable for transmitting data and control information between different components and systems according to a defined protocol.
There is a general difference between parallel and serial busses.
- Parallel bus system have a lot of parallel cables transmitting data, address or control information (parallel bits). They are used as pluggable bus systems (backplane bus systems) for connecting plug-in blocks (e. g. VMEbus, CompactPCI, IndustrialPCI etc.) and as periphery busses for connecting computers with their input / output equipment in local environment.
- Serial bus systems (cable bus system) are responsible for bit-serial data transfer between system components distributed widely in a machine via a common medium (two-wire or four-wire cable, coaxial cable, optical fibre). Consequently, they drastically reduce the wiring efforts in contrast to the conventional cabling.
Well known examples are: