Définition and history of Chipsets Northbridge Southbridge in details

What are chipsets? What are its functions? What is its importance? What is the effect of any chipsets on computer performance? On this subject, we will answer all these questions, but first, here is your address.

Definition of chipset

History and development of chipset

Northbridge 

Southbridge

Definition of chipset

Chipset is the name given to the chipset used on a motherboard .

History and development of chipset

In the early computers, motherboards used integrated circuits that were separate from one another. Therefore, many chips were needed to create all the circuits needed to make the computer work and thus the motherboards were bulky, which was not a good thing.

After some time, chip manufacturers such as Intel, began integrating several chips into larger chips. Instead of requiring dozens of small chips, thus after this update the motherboard can be designed with only some large chips. Around the mid-1990s, motherboards that used only a single chip could be built.

So in 1995 the motherboard for central processing units (CPU) used two large chipsets with all the necessary functions to make the motherboard work in its normal conditions.

With the release of the PCI bus, a new concept, which is still used today, could be used for the first time: the use of so-called bridges. Motherboards or motherboards usually have two large slides: the northbridge and the southbridge.

Sometimes some chip manufacturers can merge the north and south bridges into one chip; In this case, the motherboard will have only one large integrated circuit. Depending on the architecture of the central processing unit, or in short, CPU, it may only require the south bridge chip. In the past, many different companies introduced PC chips. Nowadays, only companies like Intel, AMD and VIA still make the chips, and they only design products for their CPUs motherboards. .

Other companies that use to manufacture chipsets include ATI, NVIDIA, VIA, SiS, ULi / ALi, UMC and OPTi.

A common confusion that occurs is the chipset manufacturer mixes up with the motherboard manufacturer. For example, if the motherboard uses chips that were manufactured by Intel, this does not mean that Intel manufactured this motherboard. ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, ECS, ASRock, Biostar and also Intel are just among the many motherboard manufacturers out there in the market. Therefore, the motherboard manufacturer purchases chips from the chipset manufacturer and manufactures motherboards.

Northbridge North Bridge

Northbridge is an Intel chipset that connects to the computer processor via buses and controls memory interaction, Peripheral Component Interconnect for PCI, Level 2 cache, and Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) activities. Northbridge communicates with the processor using a front side bus, or FSB, which is one part of the Northbridge / Southbridge group.

Southbridge

Southbridge, or South Qantara, handles input / output (I / O) functionality for chipsets. That is, whenever it comes to the input and output ports, as well as the hard disk, disk reader, floppy disk, bios, and so on

A new technology, Intel Hub Architecture, short for IHA, has replaced the Northbridge / Southbridge Group. The IHA chipset also contains two parts: a GMCH graphics controller board and an ICH controller hub. IHA architecture is used in the Intel 800 chipset, which is the first chipsets developed compared to Northbridge / Southbridge design.