The CPU sends signals through a bus to different parts of the computer. Mezzanine buses connect the CPU to high-speed peripherals and sit between the motherboard and other boards. Buffers store requests sent to and from the CPU. The PCI mezzanine card is a common type of mezzanine bus.
In computers, the central processing unit (CPU) acts like a brain, sending messages to different parts of the computer and other components. These signals are carried by a system of electrical outlets called a bus. CPUs are now so fast that they need more than one bus to carry information. A specialized bus that routes commands to and from the CPU to high-speed peripherals, such as memory cards, is called a mezzanine bus or mezzanine card.
The mezzanine bus is a computer component board that sits between the motherboard and other boards. The name mezzanine comes from the word mezzano, which means half. The bus is a bridge that connects other computer boards to the CPU and allows for simple and fast communication. Without a bus, the CPU would have to be wired separately to each board and component.
Early computer designs used a CPU and bus that both ran at the same speed. As computers became more sophisticated and faster, new bus systems were needed to keep up with faster processors. Most computers now have more than one bus to handle all the information sent to and from the CPU.
Intel® created the first mezzanine bus in the 1980s. Today, most manufacturers follow a common configuration for buses, called the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) specification. The PCI was created in the 1990s. A common type of mezzanine bus is the PCI mezzanine card (PCM).
Different PCMs are available for specific needs. Various models work with analog or digital communications, or both. PCMs occupy only one slot on the motherboard. Since slots are left to connect other cards, this allows the user to get more flexibility of the computer. PCMs also allow computers to use newer, faster peripherals without changing the motherboard.
Computer components and software are constantly sending messages to the CPU through various buses such as the mezzanine bus. To handle all CPU traffic, buses send requests through a buffer. A buffer is an area of memory used for temporary storage.
A buffer helps the computer store, then execute requests. The buffer contains all transactions sent to and from the CPU. These requests are then processed in the order received, or according to any priority processing rules set by the user.
Buffers are created using the computer’s random access memory (RAM). Information can be gathered faster from RAM than from hard drive memory. Typically, only a certain amount of RAM is allocated to a buffer. Typically, the larger the buffer, the less RAM is available for other tasks.
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