Internal Buses

Standard PCI
• PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) makes it
possible to insert peripheral components such as
network cards, sound cards, modems, extra ports such as
USB or serial, or interfacing.
• Earlier versions was parallel and supports 32 and 64 bits
• Speed is
– 133 MB/s for 32-bit at 33 MHz (133=32*33/8)
– 266 MB/s (for 32-bit at 66 MHz or 64-bit at 33 MHz)
– 533 MB/s (64-bit at 66 MHz)
 PCI-X
• Running at up to four times the clock speed of PCI
(33 MHz x 4), but is otherwise similar in electrical
implementation and uses the same protocol
• Maximum bandwidth of 1064 MB/s (64-bit at 133
MHz)
• Parallel interface
• PCI-X has been replaced in modern designs by PCI
Express
 PCI Express
• Officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a
high-speed serial computer expansion bus
standard, designed to replace the older PCI,
PCI-X and AGP bus standards.
– Serial
– Very high speed
– lower I/O pin count compared to PCI
– Small physical port
– Uses 8b/10b encoding
• PCIe is a point-to-point serial bus with link aggregation
(meaning that several serial lanes are put together to
increase transfer bandwidth).
• PCIe slots may contain from one to sixteen lanes, in
powers of two (1, 2, 4, 8, and 16).
Version Clock Bandwidth
1 bit 16 bit
1.0 2.5 GHz
250 MB/s 4 GB/s
2.0 5 GHz 500 MB/s 8 GB/s
3.0 8 GHz 1 GB/s 16 GB/s
4.0 16 GHz 2 GB/s 32 GB/s
 Moving from parallel to serial
• Parallel communication suffers from issues that prevent
transmissions from reaching higher clock rates.
• Serial internal buses give less motherboard routing, simpler
layout and smaller dimensions.
• PCI express is just one example of a general trend away from
parallel buses to serial interconnects.
• Other examples include Serial ATA (SATA) USB, and FireWire.
• The most common issues in parallel communications are EMI
and Propagation delay.
 1. EMI: Electro-Magnetic Interference
• EMI: When electric current flows through a wire, an
electromagnetic field is created around it. This field may
generate electrical current on the adjacent wire, corrupting the
information being transmitted on it.
• As in parallel transmission, several bits are transmitted at a
time. For example, in a 32-bit communication (such as the
standard PCI slot) it is necessary to have 32 wires just to
transmit data, not counting additional control signals that are
also necessary. The higher the clock, the greater the
electromagnetic interference problem.
 2. Propagation Delay
• In parallel bus, it is almost impossible to make wires have
exactly the same length on a motherboard. At higher
clock rates, data transmitted through shorter wires arrive
before the data that are transmitted through longer
wires
• As a consequence, the receiving device must wait for all
the bits to arrive in order to process the complete data,
which represents a significant loss in performance. This
problem is known as propagation delay and becomes
worse with the increase in the clock rates.
 Isn’t serial communication slower?

• It depends on what you are comparing. If you compare a

parallel communication of 33 MHz transmitting 32 bits per clock
cycle, it will be 32 times faster than a serial communication of
33 MHz transmitting only one bit at a time.
• However, if you compare the same parallel communication to a
serial communication working at a much higher clock rate, the
serial communication may be much faster.
• For example, compare the bandwidth of the original PCI bus,
which is 133 MB/s (33 MHz x 32 bits), with the lowest
bandwidth you can achieve with a PCI Express connection
(250 MB/s, 2.5 GHz x 1 bit). It is multiplied by 10 due to 8bit/10bit
encoding scheme.
 SATA
• Serial ATA (SATA, abbreviated from Serial AT Attachment) is a
computer bus interface that connects bus adapters to mass
storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and
solid-state drives. Serial ATA replaced the older Parallel ATA
(PATA) standard, offering:
• Reducing cable size and cost (seven conductors instead of 40
or 80)
• Faster data transfer
• Hot plug & play

Serial ATA

Parallel ATA
 SATA Versions
• SATA-I 1.5 Gb/s Pin # Function
• SATA-II 3 Gb/s 1 Ground

• SATA-III 6 Gb/s 2 A+ (transmit)

3 A− (transmit)
4 Ground
5 B− (receive)

External SATA 6 B+ (receive)

7 Ground
 M.2
• The M.2 format is a replacement for the mSATA
(mini-SATA) standard in Laptops.
• M.2 is a slot that can interface with SATA 3.0, PCI
Express 3.0 and even USB 3.0.
 Bluetooth +
• Bluetooth is a wireless technology standard for
exchanging data over short distances (using short-
wavelength UHF radio waves in the Industrial,
Scientific and Medical (ISM) band from 2.400 to
2.485 GHz.
• The name is attributed to Harald Bluetooth who
was king of Denmark.
• Choosing this name for the standard indicates
how important companies from the Baltic region
(nations including Denmark, Sweden, Norway
and Finland) are to the communications industry.
 Bluetooth
• The key features of Bluetooth technology are
wireless, low power and low cost.

• Bluetooth technology has achieved global

acceptance such that any Bluetooth enabled
device, almost everywhere in the world, can
connect to other Bluetooth enabled devices in
proximity.
 Piconets
• Bluetooth enabled electronic devices connect
and communicate wirelessly through short-
range, ad hoc networks known as piconets.
Each device can simultaneously communicate
with up to seven other devices within a single
piconet.

• It allows one master device to interconnect with up to seven

active slave devices. Up to 255 further slave devices can be
inactive, or parked, which the master device can bring into
active status at any time, but an active station must go into
parked first.

• Some examples of piconets include a cell phone connected to a

computer, a laptop and a Bluetooth-enabled digital camera
Bluetooth
Power: The most commonly used radio is Class 2 and uses 2.5
mW of power. Bluetooth technology is designed to have very low
power consumption. This is reinforced in the specification by
allowing radios to be powered down when inactive.

Data Rate: 1 Mbps up to 24 Mbps

Max. permitte Range

Class
d power (mW) (m)
1 100 ~100
2 2.5 ~10
3 1 ~1
4 0.5 ~0.5
WIFI Direct

• Wi-Fi Direct, is a Wi-Fi standard enabling devices to

easily connect with each other without requiring a
wireless access point.

• Faster than Bluetooth but is limited to device-to-

device communication.

• Wi-Fi Direct promises device-to-device transfer speeds

of up to 250Mbps, while Bluetooth 4.0 promises
speeds similar to Bluetooth 3.0 of up to 25Mbps.
Noise in signal cables

• Any unwanted signal that may be picked up by a

measurement system and interfere with signals being
measured. There are several types of noise in cablese such as:

• Direct Electric Contact (Galvanic Noise)

• Electromagnetic Interference (EMI)
• Radio Frequency Interference (RFI)
 Direct Electric Contact (Galvanic Noise)
• Reason: If a single data cable is carrying two signals, and if both the
signals have the same returning path, than the voltage drop in one
channel can transfer as noise into the other channel. This type of
interference is known as Direct Electric Contact or Galvanic Noise.

Prevention: This can be avoided by using

different cables for the returning signals.
This will lower the impedance of returning
signals on the other signals that are moving
forward and as a result reduce the Galvanic
Noise.
 Electromagnetic Interference and Cross Talk
• When a signal is transmitted through the cable it will produces an
electromagnetic field of interference around it and can generate
noise effects in the surrounding cables.
• One pair can induce cross-talk in another and it is additive along the
length of the cable.
• Crosstalk between wires: a magnetic field generated by current
flowing in wire A causes an unwanted current to flow in wire B.
Electromagnetic Noise and wire twisting

• Twisted pair cables help to minimize the

magnetic field created by the current in the
conductors. Each conductor in a pair carries the
same current, except in opposite directions;
therefore the magnetic fields for the conductors
cancel each other out.
 Removing noise by twisting

The noise source is close

to the signal wires; the
closer wire will couple
with the noise more
strongly and the common-
mode rejection of the
receiver will fail to
eliminate it.
The twist rate (twists per meter) makes up part of the specification
for a given type of cable. Where nearby pairs have equal twist rates,
the same conductors of the different pairs may repeatedly lie next
to each other, partially undoing the benefits of differential mode.
For this reason it is commonly specified that, at least for cables
containing small numbers of pairs, the twist rates must differ.
 Radio Frequency Interference (RFI)

• Reason: This type of noise in signal cables is often caused due to

electromagnetic and electrostatic coupling effects in the signal
cable. These coupling effects, induce electromagnetic radiations in
the noise source nearby, producing RFI.
• Prevention: RFI can be prevented by using an effective shielding
technique. Iron shielding is one of the most prominent techniques
used for this purpose.
 Ferrite bead
• Computers are noisy devices. The motherboard inside the computer's
case has an oscillator that is running at anywhere from 300 MHz to
1,000 MHz. The keyboard has its own processor and oscillator as well.
The video card has its own oscillators to drive the monitor. All of these
oscillators have the potential to broadcast radio signals at their given
frequencies
• Another source of noise is the cables connecting the devices. These
cables act as nice, long antennae for the signals they carry. They
broadcast the signals quite efficiently.
• A ferrite bead has the property of eliminating the broadcast signals.
Essentially, it "chokes" the RFI transmission at that point on the cable
Ferrite bead
• At high frequencies, ferrite bead inductors work like
resistors instead of inductors. Therefore, ferrite
bead attenuate high frequency and EMI.
• When current pass through a wire it builds a magnetic field
• When using a ferrite bead this magnetic field is dissipated by
the ferrite bead
• The higher the frequency the higher energy it takes and
hence it removes high frequency noise
 How to reduce interference?
1.Twisted pair of wires. (Reduces inductive coupling or
Electromagnetic Interference ).
2.Single earth. (To avoid multiple earth interference).
3.Differential amplifier. If two signals have the same
interference, only the difference will be amplified and
the interference will be canceled.
4.Filters. They can be used to reject interference signals.
5.Ferrite beads
6.Shielding
Induction Cooking*