In computer technology, transfers per second and its more common secondary terms gigatransfers per second (abbreviated as GT/s) and megatransfers per second (MT/s) are informal language that refer to the number of operations transferring data that occur in each second in some given data-transfer channel.
The terms are neutral with respect to the method of physically accomplishing each such data-transfer operation; nevertheless, they are most commonly used in the context of transmission of digital data.
Expanding the width of a channel, for example that between a CPU and a northbridge, increases data throughput without requiring an increase in the channel's operating frequency (measured in transfers per second).
If its internal clock runs at 100 MHz, then the effective rate is 200 MT/s, because there are 100 million rising edges per second and 100 million falling edges per second of a clock signal running at 100 MHz.
Buses like SCSI and PCI fall in the megatransfer range of data transfer rate, while newer bus architectures like the PCI-X, PCI Express, Ultra Path, and HyperTransport / Infinity Fabric operate at the gigatransfer rate.