How Do You Calculate Computer Bus Bandwidth?
In computing terms, a “bus” is a path between two pieces of hardware, through which data flows. A computing bus is not of infinite size–the bus speed is rate-limited by settings in the BIOS (the basic operating system within your computer). This is generally referred to as the bus speed, given in millions of cycles per second (megahertz). Additionally, the bus itself can only transport data at a given rate (provided in bytes per clock cycle). Consult your operating manual to determine the bus speed of your computer and the number of bytes that it is processing per clock cycle. This will be provided as two numbers–in MHz (e.g. 100MHz) for the bus speed and in bytes for the clock cycle rate (e.g. eight bytes per cycle). Convert the speed of the bus into relative terms. One megahertz is equal to one million cycles per second, so determine how many cycles per second your computer is producing by multiplying the bus speed by 1,000,000. Multiply the number of bytes transferred per cycle by
