07. Mainboard (System Board, 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
 Mother of all components

 Motherboard Diagram: More
 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/M
otherboard_diagram.svg
Donotbreakyourneck;)
Justclickonandvisitthelink!...

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
Front-Side-Bus
◦ Connects all major internal
components of a computer
(CPU and Memory)
◦ Quick and Faster

◦AKA: Expansion bus
◦Connects external devices
(Most Input/Output Devices, USB, etc)
External bus

FSB (Front Side Bus)
 System Bus of Intel-chip-based
Motherboards
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front-
side_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/Front-
side_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.

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

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

07. Mainboard (System Board, Motherboard)

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