Southbridge and Northbridge Defined

[Kev_Dawg]

Does the northbridge consist of the CPU, Memory, L2 Cache, PCI and AGP? Southbridge consists of the I/O functions right, if I am wrong please tell me, I am asking just to make sure.

[John64]

traditionally, from the time of AGP to now if you are Intel, and Right before Hammer if you are AMD, the northbridge only has the memory controller, graphics tunnel (AGP) and link to the southbridge. During the same time, the southbridge normally has ISA (Renamed LPC by Intel), PCI and other I/O. Again, the CPU had the L1, L2 and maybe L3. Previous to this, the L2 was in a card, much like ram.

Now with Intel, PCIe replaces AGP, but it all stays the same, the Front Side Bus is the primary high speed, low latency links (terms used loosley). With AMD, your CPU has the Memory controller, and uses an HT link to communicate with other CPU's and the southbridge. Technically AMD Hammer chips only have southbridges in the traditional sense, except the PCIe tunneling is in the SB. Even dual chip designs, like Via's are really one chip more than nessecary.

The defininition isnt hard and fast, it depends on the individual chipSET, or chip as the case may be