Chipset In Computer System --- Computer Learning

Chipset:

 The PC has become so complex that even the most recent, powerful processors can’t do the entire job of managing the flow of data by themselves. The CPU has been given help in the form of the chip set, located nearby on the motherboard. The chip set traditionally consisted of two microchips, often referred to as the North Bridge and the South Bridge, that acted as the administrators to the CPU, or chief executive. The chip set bridged logical and physical gaps between the CPU and other chips, all the time watching and controlling the input and output of specific components. The exact function of the chip set is constantly changing. In 2003 AMD introduced the AMD Athlon 64 bit chip, where the CPU reclaimed some of the memory controller functions of the North Bridge. Intel later also adopted this architecture with their core i-series of processors.

 But in all cases, the bridges determine what kinds of memory, processors, and other components can work with that particular motherboard. There is now a trend to replace the names North Bridge and South Bridge with less elegant terms such as Graphics Memory Controller Hub (GMCH) and the I/O Controller Hub (ICH), even though their basic purpose is the same.

Where a motherboard still has the older architecture you can distinguish the North Bridge because it resides as close as possible to three other components that are connected to this chip: the CPU, the memory, and the graphics port. Even though connections are at the speed of light, their proximity on the motherboard does make a difference. When you’re counting in nanoseconds (billionths of a second) ‘small differences’ are significant. When the CPU needs data from RAM, it sends a request to the North Bridge memory controller6 . The controller, in turn, sends the request along to memory and tells the CPU how long the processor must wait to read the memory over a speedy connection called the front side bus (FSB). The remaining connection of the North Bridge is to the South Bridge.

The South Bridge primarily handles the routing of traffic between the various input/output (I/O) devices on the system for which speed is not vital to the total performance, such as the disk drives (including RAID drive arrays), optical drives, PCIExpress devices, the older PCI bus, and the USB, Ethernet, and audio ports. It is also responsible for less prominent input/output, such as the real-time clock, interrupt controller, and power management. The remaining slowcoaches of the computer - the keyboard, the serial ports, and the mouse - are handled by a separate device called the SIO or super input/ output.