local bus

Also called the "system bus," it is the pathway between the CPU, memory and peripheral devices. In the early 1990s, when the higher-speed VL-bus and PCI bus were introduced, they were called local buses, because they ran at the then-current speed of the local bus. Since then, local buses have gone way beyond the speeds of VL-bus and PCI. See bus and PC data buses.

Local Bus

Peripheral controller cards plug into slots on the local bus.

      Bus Speed Comparisons

      Bus type  Width     Speed   Total rate
      ISA       16 bits   8 MHz   16MB/sec
      EISA      32 bits   8 MHz   32MB/sec
      VL-bus    32 bits   25 MHz  100MB/sec
      VL-bus    32 bits   33 MHz  132MB/sec
      PCI       32 bits   33 MHz  132MB/sec
      PCI       64 bits   33 MHz  264MB/sec

---

(hardware)

local bus - A bus connecting a processor to memory, usually on the same circuit board as opposed to a backplane and therefore faster. Various proprietary local busses for personal computers are still in use. The most common are Vesa local bus (VLB or VL), and Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI). Some computers, e.g. notebook computers, use a local bus with no expansion slots. Previous non-local bus standards include ISA, EISA and MCA.