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As fewer functions are left un-handled by the processor itself, chipset venders have condensed the remaining north and southbridge functions into a single chip. Intel followed suit in 2008 with the release of its Core i series CPUs and the X58 platform." In newer processors integration has further increased, primarily inclusion of the system's primary PCIe controller and integrated graphics directly on the CPU itself. The Athlon64 marked the introduction of an integrated memory controller being incorporated into the processor itself allowing the processor to directly access and handle memory, negating the need for a traditional northbridge to do so. #INTEL ICH10 FAMILY SMBUS CONTROLLER DRIVER WINDOWS 10 SERIES#However in 2003 AMD's introduction the Athlon 64-bit series of processors changed this. This made processor performance highly dependent on the system chipset - especially the northbridge's memory performance and ability to shuttle this information back to the processor. Thus any interaction between a CPU and main memory, any expansion device such as a graphics card(s), whether AGP, PCI or integrated into the motherboard, was directly controlled by the northbridge IC on behalf of the processor. The connection between the northbridge and southbridge does not have a common name, but is usually a high speed interconnect proprietary to the chipset vendor. ![]() #INTEL ICH10 FAMILY SMBUS CONTROLLER DRIVER WINDOWS 10 SERIAL#The southbridge traditionally handles "everything else," generally lower speed peripherals and board functions (the largest being hard disk and storage connectivity) such as USB, parallel and serial communications. Requests to resources not directly controlled by the northbridge are offloaded to the southbridge - with the northbridge being an intermediary between the processor and the southbridge. This connection between the processor and northbridge is traditionally known as the front side bus (FSB). The northbridge is directly responsible for communications with high-speed devices (System memory, and primary expansion buses such as PCIe, AGP, PCI cards being common examples) and conversely any system communication back to the processor. Traditionally in x86 computers, the processor's primary connection to the rest of the machine is through the motherboard chipset's northbridge. Move toward processor integration in PCs For example, the NCR 53C9x, a low-cost chipset implementing a SCSI interface to storage devices, could be found in Unix machines such as the MIPS Magnum, embedded devices, and personal computers. Computer systems produced since then often share commonly used chipsets, even across widely disparate computing specialties. In the 1980s, Chips and Technologies pioneered the manufacturing of chipsets for PC-compatible computers. Some server manufacturers also develop custom chipsets for their products. Applecomputers and Unix workstations have traditionally used custom-designed chipsets. Current manufacturers of chipsets for x86 motherboards include AMD, Broadcom, Intel, NVIDIA, SiS and VIA Technologies. The manufacturer of a chipset often is independent from the manufacturer of the motherboard. In many modern chipsets, the southbridge contains some on-chip integrated peripherals, such as Ethernet, USB, and audio devices. The northbridge links the CPU to very high-speed devices, especially RAM and graphics controllers, and the southbridge connects to lower-speed peripheral buses (such as PCI or ISA). Examples include the Commodore Amiga's Original Chip Set or SEGA's System 16chipset.īased on Intel Pentium-class microprocessors, the term chipset often refers to a specific pair of chips on the motherboard: the northbridge and the southbridge. In home computers, game consoles and arcade game hardware of the 1980s and 1990s, the term chipset was used for the custom audio and graphics chips.
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