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Academic Year: 2018-19 Semester: IV Class / Branch: SE IT Subject: Microprocessor Programming Lab

This document discusses the components and connections of a PC motherboard. It describes the north bridge and south bridge chips that manage communication between the CPU and other motherboard components. The north bridge connects directly to the CPU and handles high-performance tasks, while the south bridge connects slower components and expansion slots like PCI, SATA, and USB. Ports on the motherboard interface with internal and external devices. The BIOS firmware stored on the motherboard is executed at startup to initialize hardware.

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Kaustubh Sawant
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46 views

Academic Year: 2018-19 Semester: IV Class / Branch: SE IT Subject: Microprocessor Programming Lab

This document discusses the components and connections of a PC motherboard. It describes the north bridge and south bridge chips that manage communication between the CPU and other motherboard components. The north bridge connects directly to the CPU and handles high-performance tasks, while the south bridge connects slower components and expansion slots like PCI, SATA, and USB. Ports on the motherboard interface with internal and external devices. The BIOS firmware stored on the motherboard is executed at startup to initialize hardware.

Uploaded by

Kaustubh Sawant
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Department of Information Technology

Academic Year: 2018-19 Semester: IV


Class / Branch: SE IT
Subject: Microprocessor Programming Lab

Experiment No. 12

Aim:- To study PC motherboard technology(North bridge and south


bridge),various connections and ports used in computer communications.

Hardware Used:- PC Motherboard

Theory:-

Introduction to the motherboard

A motherboard is an electronic circuit board in a computer which interconnects


hardware devices attached to it — which is to say, all of the system hardware. At
minimum it includes one or more Central Processing Units (CPU), and the main
processing activity of the computer takes place on it. However, other connected
printed circuit boards may contain their own pre-processing or post-processing

CPUs, to take some of the load off of the motherboard; these, together with other
plug-in boards without CPUs, may be called "daughter boards". It was called a
"mother" board in relation to these. A PC motherboard generally has a series of
slots, allowing daughter boards to be plugged in directly. Other connectors on the
motherboard allow communication through cables with various peripheral devices,
both inside and outside the computer case.
ATX motherboard

1. Processor socket

2. Chipset

3. RAM slots

4.AGP graphic card slot


5. PCI slots

6. CNR modem slot

7. Audio chip

8. I/O chip

9. BIOS

10. ATX power connector

11. Floppy drive connector

12. ATA connectors

The external ports (connections) are along the top edge (right hand side). A

1. Ports

Ports are used by a motherboard to interface with electronics both inside and
outside of the computer. Integrated ports are

those that are part of, directly wired to, the motherboard. Internal integrated ports
are used to connect devices inside the

system unit. External ports may be connected to the motherboard directly


(integrated) or by circuit boards that are inserted

into slots on the motherboard. It is often possible to add new external ports by
inserting such a circuit board into an open

slot. The external integrated ports are generally grouped together as shown below.
Expansion card ports are arranged in a

row of equal sized rectangular slots


A typical north/south bridge layout

2. North Bridge:

• A north bridge or host bridge is one of the two chips in the core logic chipset
architecture on a PC motherboard

• North bridge is connected directly to the CPU via the front-side bus (FSB)
and is thus responsible for tasks that require the highest performance.

• The north bridge is usually paired with a south bridge, also known as I/O
controller hub.In systems where they are included, these two chips manage
communications between the CPU and other parts of the motherboard, and
constitute the core logic chipset of the PC motherboard.

3. South Bridge:
• The south bridge typically implements the slower capabilities of the
motherboard in a north bridge/south bridge chipset computer architecture.

• In systems with Intel chipsets, the south bridge is named I/O Controller Hub
(ICH), while AMD has named its south bridge Fusion Controller Hub (FCH)
since the introduction of its Fusion APUs.

• The southbridge can usually be distinguished from the northbridge by not


being directly connected to the CPU.

• Rather, the northbridge ties the southbridge to the CPU. Through the use of
controller integrated channel circuitry, the northbridge can directly link
signals from the I/O units to the CPU for data control and access.

Other Important Interface slots:

PCI-Express:

• PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially


abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e,is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus
standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards.

• PCI-e has numerous improvements over the older standards, including


higher maximum system bus throughput, lower I/O pin count and smaller
physical footprint, better performance scaling for bus devices, a more
detailed error detection and reporting mechanism .

SATA(Serial Advanced Technology Attachment)

• Serial ATA (SATA, abbreviated from Serial AT Attachment)is a computer


bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as
hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives.
• Serial ATA succeeded the older Parallel ATA (PATA) standard,,offering
several advantages over the older interface: reduced cable size and cost
(seven conductors instead of 40 or 80), native hot swapping, faster data
transfer through higher signaling rates, and more efficient transfer through
an (optional) I/O queuing protocol.

BIOS:

• For IBM PC compatible computers, BIOS, an acronym for Basic


Input/Output System and also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS or
PC BIOS).

• It is non-volatile firmware used to perform hardware initialization during the


booting process (power-on startup), and to provide runtime services for
operating systems and programs.

• The BIOS firmware comes pre-installed on a personal computer's system


board, and it is the first software run when powered on.

CConclusion:- Thus we have done the successful study of both north and south
bridge chip set of Motherboard that ow many components are placed over
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