motherboard assign13

8/12/2019 Motherboard Assign13

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3. Motherboard - Bridge Architecture

a. The Northbridge - connects directly to the processor via the front side bus (FSB). A

memory controller is located on the North bridge, which gives the CPU fast access to the

memory. The North bridge also connects to the AGP or PCI Express bus and to the

memory itself.

b. The South bridge is slower than the North bridge

- Information from the CPU has to go through the North bridge before reaching the

Southbridge.

- Other busses connect the South bridge to the PCI bus, the USB ports and the IDE or SATA

hard disk connections.

- Chipset selection and CPU selection go hand in hand, because manufacturers optimize

chipsets to work with specific CPUs. The chipset is an integrated part of the

motherboard, so it cannot be removed or upgraded.

Bridge Architecture -Motherboard

4. Motherboard - Intel Hub Architecture (IHA)

• is Intel's architecture for the 8xx family of chipsets, starting with the Intel 810.

• It uses a memory controller hub (MCH) that is connected to an I/O Controller Hub (ICH) via a

266 MB/s bus. This connection is sometimes called Direct Media Interface (DMI).

• The MCH chip supports memory and AGP, while the ICH chip provides connectivity for PCI,

USB, sound, IDE hard disks and LAN.

• the IHA is much faster than the earlier north bridge / south bridge design, which hooked alllow-speed ports to the PCI bus.



6. Devices, Memory and CPU

DRAM Technology Evolution

• 1991 –EDO RAM (Extended Data Out RAM )

• 1997 - SDRAM

– 66MHz -100MHz -133MHz



• 2002 – Double Data Rate RAM

– 200MHz -266MHz -333MHz – 400MHz

7. Peripheral Component Interconnect

• Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) - a versatile, functional way to connect sound,

video and network cards to a motherboard.

• Disadvantages –

– processors, video cards, sound cards and networks have gotten faster and morepowerful, PCI has stayed the same.

– It has a fixed width of 32 bits

– can handle only 5 devices at a time.

The newer, 64-bit PCI-X bus provides more bandwidth

• PCI Express (PCIe)

– eliminates a lot of these shortcomings,

– provides more bandwidth

– is compatible with existing operating systems.

– is compatible with existing operating systems.

– Each lane of a PCI Express connection contains two pairs of wires -- one to send and

one to receive.

- Packets of data move across the lane at a rate of one bit per cycle.



• A x1 connection, is the smallest PCIe connection. It has one lane made up of four wires. It

carries one bit per cycle in each direction.

• x2 link contains eight wires and transmits two bits at once

• x4 link transmits four bits, and so on. Other configurations are x12, x16 and x32

• single PCI Express lane, can handle 200 MB of traffic in each direction per second.

• A x16 PCIe connector can move an amazing 6.4 GB of data per second in each direction. At

these speeds, a x1 connection can easily handle a gigabit Ethernet connection as well as

audio and storage applications. A x16 connection can easily handle powerful graphics

adapters.

A few simple advances have contributed to this massive jump in serial connection speed:

• Prioritization of data, which allows the system to move the most important data

first and helps prevent bottlenecks

• Time-dependent (real-time) data transfers

• Improvements in the physical materials used to make the connections

• Better handshaking and error detection

• Better methods for breaking data into packets and putting the packets together again.

• each device has its own dedicated, point-to-point connection to the switch

Disadvantages of parallel connections -

• As speeds get higher and higher, wires can interfere with each other

electromagnetically

• Improvements to hardware and to the process of dividing, labeling and reassembling

packets have led to much faster serial connections, such as USB 2.0 and FireWire.

8. IDE – Integrated Drive Electronics

• IDE was created as a way to standardize the use of hard drives in computers. The basicconcept behind IDE is that the hard drive and the controller should be combined. The

controller is a small circuit board with chips that provide guidance as to exactly how the hard

drive stores and accesses data.

• IDE became the term that covered the entire range of integrated drive/controller devices.

Since almost all IDE drives are ATA-based, the two terms are used interchangeably.

9. AT Attachment

• This interface is often referred to as an IDE controller, which is incorrect. -

• The interface is actually a host adapter,



• The actual controller is on a circuit board attached to the hard drive.

• originally developed for connecting hard drives, it has evolved into the universal interface

for connecting internal floppy drives, CD-ROM drives and even some tape backup drives.

• IBM introduced the AT computer in 1984 with a couple of key innovations.

• Offered a hard drive for the AT that used a new combined drive/controller.

• A ribbon cable from the drive/controller combination ran to an ISA card to connect to the

computer, giving birth to the AT Attachment (ATA) interface.

10. Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA). The SATA interface is a design for

transferring data among storage devices like hard drives and optic drives.

In comparison with the ATA interface, the SATA offers a faster transfer rate with features and

improvements we will see throughout the guide.

Features And Improvements

• new cable that uses only 7 wires. With only 7 wires the cable is thin and permits a better

airflow inside the computer case.

• is as easy as plug here and plug there. No cable twisting problems like the ATA.

the possibility to hot swapping. It means, you can plug or unplug hardware without having to

reboot the computer.

SATA 1 And SATA 2 Standards

SATA 1 - SATA 150, offers a bandwidth of 1.5 Gbit/s.

SATA 2 - SATA 300 - 3 Gbit/s.

The SATA 3 is on the way and will offer a bandwidth of 6 Gbit/s.

11. Core i7 – Nehalem processor, Motherboard

Intel Core i7 – Nehalem , successor to the Intel Core 2 brand of processors.

• four cores,

• an integrated memory controller

• three levels of cache

• a QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) replacing the earlier front-side bus.

With the absence of a front-side bus, the Core i7 requires a chipset that is compatible with its

QPI.

motherboard assign13

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