Software bus

A software bus is a software architecture model where a shared communication channel facilitates connections and communication between software modules. This makes software buses conceptually similar to the bus term used in computer hardware for interconnecting pathways.^[1]

In the early microcomputer era of the 1970s, Digital Research's operating system CP/M was often described as a software bus.^[2][3] Lifeboat Associates, an early distributor of CP/M and later of MS-DOS software, had a whole product line named Software Bus.^[4] D-Bus is used in many modern desktop environments to allow multiple processes to communicate with one another.

Examples

• Lifeboat Associates Software Bus-80 aka SB-80, a version of CP/M-80 for 8080/Z80 8-bit computers
• Lifeboat Associates Software Bus-86 aka SB-86, a version of MS-DOS for x86 16-bit computers.
• Component Object Model for in-process and interprocess communication.
• D-Bus for interprocess communication.
• Enterprise service bus for distributed communication.

See also

• Bus (computing)