A data bus is a group of connections running throughout a digital system (e.g. computer) that attaches to all the various units in that digital system that process or generate data (e.g. ALU, memory, register set, I/O devices). Only one unit that is connected to the data bus can be enabled at a time to drive it with a data value. Most digital systems have only a single data bus, but some (e.g. digital signal processing computers) may have more, allowing several different data values to be passed between units simultaneously instead of just one at a time.
There are 2 kinds Data bus and address bus data bus which carries the data ( includes both instruction and data). address bus which carries where the data in the data bus must be sent to in the RAM or which I/O device has to be active to read / write data to the data bus .
Data bus
A communications bus which transfers information or data. Most busses are data busses. This can include the Front Side Bus, PCI bus, Memory Bus, and more.
An Address Bus gives the memory instructions on where to place the actual data that it will stored or read. Basically a map location. The Data Bus carries the information that is going to be stored or read using the location that the Address Bus gave to the memory. Address bus is unidirectional while data bus is bi directional
control bus
The control bus is a unidirectional bus because it can receive the data from any kind of inputs and send back the output. This whole process is done by the data buses.
Data bus - transfers data round system address bus - CPU provides the addresses to where the data must be fetched, through this bus control bus - timing and signals which control data flow in the system.
A bus in this context is a data route which can carry data in both directions.
A data bus is bidirectional because the processor needs it to both read and write. Also, in the case of the 4004, the data bus was tri-multiplexed with the 12 bit address bus and the 8 bit opcode bus.
In technology, the bus is used to carry data. The width of a data bus helps determine the amount of bytes that can be carried out each second.
In order to demultiplex the address and data bus, you provide latches that sample the multiplexed bus. At ALE=true, they follow the bus. At ALE=falling edge, they lock onto the last value of the bus. The latches will then become the address bus, while the original bus becomes the data bus.
The width of a data bus is referred to as the data path size. An example would be a 16 bit bus can transmit 16 bits of information