Question

Text on a website states,

Each BUS CYCLE on the 8086 equals four system clocking periods (T states).
The clock rate is 5MHz , therefore one Bus Cycle is 800ns .
The transfer rate is 1.25MHz.

Now I get the first two points but I am unable to understand the term transfer rate. I understand how it is calculated but I am unable to understand the why is it called transfer rate. Please help me out. Thanks

Answer 1

If you can perform one transfer every T seconds then the there can be up to 1/T transfers per second. For t = 800 ns = 0.0000008 s this gives 1,250,000 transfers per second = 1.25 MHz.

Another way of looking at it is that the clock rate is 5 MHz but if it takes 4 clocks to perform a transfer, then you will only get a transfer rate of one quarter of the clock rate, i.e. 5 MHz / 4 = 1.25 MHz.