Motherboard

Motherboard
AKA:

Mainboard

System board

What is the Motherboard?

The

main circuit board which holds and connect all main components of a computer system
of all components

Mother

Motherboard Diagram

Motherboard Diagram: More

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/M otherboard_diagram.svg

Do not break your neck ;) Just click on and visit the link!...

Bus

In computer architecture, a bus is a subsystem that transfers data between components inside a computer, or between computers

Internal bus
AKA: local bus, internal data bus, memory bus, system bus or FrontSide-Bus Connects all major internal components of a computer (CPU and Memory)

Quick and Faster

External bus AKA: Expansion bus Connects external devices

(Most Input/Output Devices, USB, etc)

FSB (Front Side Bus)

System Bus of Intel-chip-based Motherboards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontside_bus FSB performance can be measured by FSB Frequency (MHz), Transfers/Cycle, Bus Width and Transfer Rate (MB/sec)

FSB Transfer Rates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontside_bus#Transfer_rates

Related component speeds

CPU RAM

Evolution
More modern designs use point-to-point connections like AMD's HyperTransport and Intel's QuickPath Interconnect (QPI). These implementations remove the traditional northbridge in favor of a direct link from the CPU to the southbridge or I/O controller Therefore FSB is no longer used and replaced by DMI

Chipset

A chipset or PC chipset refers to a group of integrated circuits, or chips, that are designed to work together usually marketed as a single product.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipset

Well known Chipset vendors

Intel, AMD, VIA, nVidia

More links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_ch ipsets#Core_i_Series_chipsets

Traditionally chipsets had two major chips called Northbridge and Southbridge

Northbridge

Northbridge typically handles communications among the CPU, in some cases RAM, and Display controller (PCI Express or AGP) and the Southbridge The high-speed part of a chipset and interconnects the CPU to memory via FSB

Evolution
With the AMD Athlon64 series CPU's, a new architecture was used where some functions of the north and south bridge chips were moved to the CPU. Intel followed suit with their Core i series CPU's

Due to the push for System-on-a-chip (SoC) processors modern devices increasingly have the northbridge integrated into the CPU die itself
For Intel Sandy Bridge and AMD Accelerated Processing Unit processors introduced in 2011, all of the functions of northbridge reside on the CPU

Southbridge

The southbridge typically implements the slower capabilities of the motherboard in a northbridge/southbridge chipset computer architecture.
Handles most input/output devices Southbridge communicates with CPU via Northbridge

Evolution
As modern computers does not contain a Northbridge, nowadays Southbridge communicates with CPU directly In Intel chipset systems, the southbridge is named Input/output Controller Hub (ICH). In AMD systems it is named as Fusion Controller Hub (FCH)

A newer Motherboard

(Core iX 3rd Gen)

[NO Northbridge]

A newer Chipset [NO Northbridge]. Intel Z77

Difference between FSB and DMI

FSB DMI

BIOS

Basic Input/Output System BIOS contents is stored on an EEPROM chip BIOS selects candidate boot devices using information collected by POST and configuration information from EEPROM, CMOS RAM

BIOS, a set of computer instructions in firmware that control input and output operations

BIOS provides a way for programs and operating systems to interact with input/output devices. Variations in the system hardware are hidden by the BIOS from programs that use BIOS services instead of directly accessing the hardware
BIOS Manufacturers AMI, Award, Phoenix.. Etc.

A BIOS settings menu

UEFI

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface Successor of EFI

(Extensible Firmware Interface)

UEFI is meant to replace BIOS firmware interface But in practice most (all!), most UEFI images provide legacy support for BIOS services

UEFI

OS Support

Most newer OS support UEFI (Windows 8, Newer Linux Distributions etc.) OS like Windows 7 support EFI, but not UEFI

UEFI BIOS

Form Factor

Form Factor decides many things such as Casing Size and Power supply type of a motherboard

CPU Socket

CPU socket plays an important role in Motherboards as it limit the CPU support
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_socket

RAM Type

RAM type also important Normally a motherboard support only single type of RAM (DDR2, DDR3)

Expansion Slots +

PCIe and PCI slots SATA, IDE ports USB ports Other

References

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Compute r+Motherboards

https://www.google.com/search?q=M otherboard

Thank You!

Ayubowan!