The Northbridge is a part of a
Chipset motherboard with Southbridge. The Northbridge is directly connected to processor
and manages the main memory. It is connected to the Southbridge, which handles
all input / output (PCI Bus..., Hard disks and floppy drives controllers, keyboard,
communication ports such as parallel and serie connections, USB, FireWire, ...).
The northbridge is specific to the processor. To
enable the connection, one must not only be compatible at speeds external
processor (FSB) But
also timing signals and processor socket. This constraint explains the dual chip
- chip. AMD has developed a specific bus microprocessor - northbridge, the Hypertransport
(AMD) although since Athlon
64. The memory controller is directly implemented in the processor (unlike Intel
for Core 2 and above, but too in I5 and I7 witch used DDR3 memories).
In terms of memory connections, each chip
accepts a type of RAM components (currently DDR II and DDR
III).
As the speed of communication are more important
in the Northbridge as the Southbridge, ports AGP
and PCI-Express
are also linked directly to the integrated circuit.
The new chipset actually use 2 electronics, old
computers using a set of electronic components to perform this operation. This
development has improved the integration of transistors in a single electronic
circuit. Current developments can also use different Southbridge to Northbridge
same (from the same manufacturer) on a motherboard. This interface allows a
single processor on a motherboard with different output ports as
Gigabit network ports, S-ATA controllers in RAID...
In new generation, processor is directly
connected to memory (and some time to PCI-Express bus)
