The South bridge chip is an important part of the motherboard chipset, generally located on the motherboard far below the CPU slot, near the PCI slot, generally without heat sink coverage.
The North bridge chip is the closest chip to the CPU on the motherboard, which is mainly due to the fact that the communication between the North bridge chip and the processor is the closest, and the transmission distance is shortened in order to improve the communication performance. The North Bridge plays a leading role in the computer, so it is also called the Host Bridge.
The role of the North bridge chip:
The Northbridge chip is responsible for communicating with the cpu and controlling the memory (limited to Intel cpus other than the Core series, AMD series cpus have integrated memory controllers in the cpu since the K8 series.
Therefore, the North bridge chip of AMD platform does not control the memory), AGP data is transmitted inside the North bridge, providing support for the type and main frequency of the CPU, the front-end bus frequency of the system, the type of memory (SDRAM, DDR SDRAM and RDRAM, etc.) and the maximum capacity, AGP slot, ECC error correction, etc. The integrated chipset's Northbridge chip also incorporates a graphics processor.
The role of the Southbridge chip:
The South bridge chip is responsible for the communication between I\/O buses, such as PCI bus, USB, LAN, ATA, SATA, audio controller, keyboard controller, real-time clock controller, advanced power management, etc. These technologies are generally relatively stable, so different chipsets may be the same south bridge chip, the difference is only the north bridge chip.