Talk:Southbridge (computing)

It would be interesting to hear the originas of the terminology "Northbridge" and "Southbridge". I tried googling around for this info ans so far didn't find anything.

Bridges in computing connect different systems at a low level. North and south probably comes from their relative position in the systems hierarchy.

Another question: What kind of bus connects the north and south bridge commonly? Are there proprietary interconnects or just a PCI bus, thus limiting everything behind the northbridge to 133MB/s?


 * That's dependent on which chipset you're talking about. Some chipsets did use the standard PCI bus which allowed for some interesting mix-n-match motherboards. But that created a bottle neck on the already saturated PCI bus, AFAIK all modern chipsets are paired due to the proprietary interconnects.


 * see also [Direct Media Interface] (10Gb/s) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.26.167.6 (talk) 17:42, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

It would be nice to have a diagram here and on the Northbridge article to illustrate the relationships between Northbridge, Southbridge, CPU, memory, devices, etc.

Chipsetfunctions.png
The first figure of this article (Chipsetfunctions.png) does not make a lot of sense and is confusing. The legend does not adequately describe the relationships illustrated by the various arrows. Do the arrows indicate buses? wires? What is a "General linkage/interaction"? What is the meaning of the dashed black arrow? Why is there an arrow connecting the CPU directly to RAM? Why are there two arrows (a red one and a black one) from the NB to the RAM? Also, there are so many gray arrows that the entire figure almost becomes meaningless. 131.179.116.150 (talk) 00:51, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I have removed the diagram. It is confusing. Rilak (talk) 04:27, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

USB Southbridge
Does this mean that the USB in southbridge is faster than the USB in PCI because the bus that the USB in the southbridge uses the 'proprietary bus' and not the PCI bus?

This is faster... USB --> Southbridge --> Proprietary Bus --> Northbridge --> CPU

than this USB --> PCI --> Southbridge --> Proprietary Bus --> Northbridge --> CPU


 * Don't cite me as an expert on this one, but I think it's entirely dependent on how the Southbridge implements the USB controller.

From what I remember, there was actually a specific chipset for a specific set of processors that were code-named "Northbridge" and "Southbridge". The usage then simply got generalized, and everyone started to think that it had always been called thus. Unfortunately, I can't give any reference for this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.199.5.251 (talk) 08:37, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

why is this being removed?
"With Intel's Sandy Bridge processor, the northbridge is shifted onto the CPU die itself, thus the southbridge is now directly connected to the CPU through a DMI connection." 175.156.199.147 (talk) 14:54, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Because it's too manufacturer/model-specific ? AFAIR Intel has done similar thing with the latest Atom, AMD with their Fusion APUs. --Denniss (talk) 16:34, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I believe AMD with Ryzen did the same thing and talks about CPU and Chipset connected with a PCIe bus? not sure there Theking2 (talk) 18:49, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Past tense
Northbridge already refers to these technologies in the past tense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eigengrau82 (talk • contribs) 12:23, 11 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Sorry, this sounds confusing; any chances for a clarification, please? &mdash; Dsimic (talk | contribs) 23:35, 11 February 2014 (UTC)