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 North Bridge Definition: The microchip that forms part of the chipset supporting communication between a CPU (or CPUs) and other components such as RAM and communications. Initially released by Intel for the Pentium II to allow changes to peripheral support without having to change the whole chipset (in theory a new South Bridge chip could be used that supported USB2 without having to redesign the North Bridge) and support the bandwidth required for the new Advanced Graphics Port (AGP). The North Bridge is typically tasked with communication with the CPU(s), the graphics bus (AGP or PCIExpress) and memory bus. The South Bridge typically looks after I/O tasks such as the PCI bus, USB and storage. More recently as bandwidth demands have increased some of these tasks have been moved to the North Bridge. Usage: That particular North bridge only supports PC-133 RAM. Posted by FlyingPete on May 17, 2009 at 14:59:32 Pacific |
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