A backplane or backplane system is a group of electrical connectors in parallel with each other, so that each pin of each connector is linked to the same relative pin of all the other connectors, forming a computer bus. It is used to connect several printed circuit boards together to make up a complete computer system. Backplanes commonly use a printed circuit board, but wire-wrapped backplanes have also been used in minicomputers and high-reliability applications.
Major components on a PICMG 1.3 active backplane
Wire-wrapped backplane from a 1960s PDP-8 minicomputer
ISA Passive Backplane showing connectors and parallel signal traces on back side. Only components are connectors, capacitors, resistors and voltage indicator LEDs.
A single-board computer installed into a passive backplane
In computer architecture, a bus is a communication system that transfers data between components inside a computer, or between computers. This expression covers all related hardware components and software, including communication protocols.
Four PCI Express bus card slots (from top to second from bottom: ×4, ×16, ×1 and ×16), compared to a 32-bit conventional PCI bus card slot (very bottom)
