In VLSI design, a bus represents a collection of parallel wires used to transmit data, addresses, or control signals between different components of a system. It serves as a shared communication channel, allowing multiple modules to exchange information. For instance, an address bus carries memory addresses from the CPU to the memory controller, enabling the CPU to access specific memory locations.
A vector, in the context of VLSI, generally refers to a one-dimensional array of signals or data values. It’s often used to represent a multi-bit value or a group of related signals treated as a single entity. For example, a register storing a 32-bit value can be viewed as a vector of 32 individual bits. Similarly, a simulation testbench might utilize vectors to apply a series of input stimuli to a circuit under test.