About chipsets

[MojangYang]

Hi, guys.

usually when we say what chipset our moto has, we say “z370, z170 H170” etc. only one set of lettter and numbers.

but when I searched up for the chipset of a old server I bought, It said: “Serverworks HT-2100 Northbridge and HT-1000 Southbridge Chipset”

 

why did it tell me the north and south bridge chips of the server? I mean, when I search up a pc it only tells me something like “z170 z270 h370” etc like I mentioned, and not the two chipset chips.

why is this? Is it because many of the motherboards nowadays have north bridge and south bridge in one chip and called it “z170 h370.....”

[mikat]

Server stuff usually has less sexy names

[Cereal5]

Northbridge is the memory controller, which for the past couple of Intel's generations, has been on the CPU itself. The CPU communicates through the northbridge to the memory bus and PCIe bus. The CPU also communicates to the southbridge through the northbridge

 

Southbridge is... pretty much everything else. All I/O (input/output) is handled through the southbridge. This includes SATA, NVMe, Audio, Ethernet, CMOS, BIOS, USB, and legacy PCI.

Spoiler

1 minute ago, mikat said:

Server stuff usually has less sexy names

And yeah that too. It doesn't help that it's old.

[KarathKasun]

16 minutes ago, MojangYang said:

Hi, guys.

usually when we say what chipset our moto has, we say “z370, z170 H170” etc. only one set of lettter and numbers.

but when I searched up for the chipset of a old server I bought, It said: “Serverworks HT-2100 Northbridge and HT-1000 Southbridge Chipset”

 

why did it tell me the north and south bridge chips of the server? I mean, when I search up a pc it only tells me something like “z170 z270 h370” etc like I mentioned, and not the two chipset chips.

why is this? Is it because many of the motherboards nowadays have north bridge and south bridge in one chip and called it “z170 h370.....”

Because your run of the mill desktop does not have a northbridge anymore, its now built into the CPU.  H370 is actually a southbridge, AKA I/O hub.

 

In systems like older servers, or any new-ish system that has a northbridge(NB), the NB handles DMI/HyperTransport to PCIe connections and the southbridge(SB) handles PCIe to SATA/I2C/SMBus.

 

In even older systems the NB handles memory as well.

[mikat]

2 minutes ago, Cereal5 said:

Northbridge is the memory controller, which for the past couple of Intel's generations, has been on the CPU itself. The CPU communicates through the northbridge to the memory bus and PCIe bus. The CPU also communicates to the southbridge through the northbridge

  

Southbridge is... pretty much everything else. All I/O (input/output) is handled through the southbridge. This includes SATA, NVMe, Audio, Ethernet, CMOS, BIOS, USB, and legacy PCI.

  Reveal hidden contents

And yeah that too. It doesn't help that it's old.

The northbridge is not just a memory controller, it interfaces with the CPU, PCI(e) lanes, Memory and the southbridge  

[Cereal5]

4 minutes ago, mikat said:

The northbridge is not just a memory controller, it interfaces with the CPU, PCI(e) lanes, Memory and the southbridge  

Yes, I know

7 minutes ago, Cereal5 said:

The CPU communicates through the northbridge to the memory bus and PCIe bus. The CPU also communicates to the southbridge through the northbridge

 

[mariushm]

Modern processors incorporate the northbridge into the processor.

Traditionally, northbrige's job was to be a memory controller, AGP "controller" (video card slot before pci-e), pci-e controller and also creating connection to the southbridge

The southbridge's role was handling most of the I/O : sata controller, ide controller, usb controllers , creating PCI slots, isa slots, connection to onboard network, audio , irDa, extra usb controllers, connection to the SuperIO chip (which creates ps/2 connectors, parallel port, serial ports, sometimes fan controller, temperature and voltage monitoring) and also it's where the BIOS was traditionally connected to.

 

In order to increase performance, the memory controller was incorporate in the CPU and the cpu also offers a few pci-e lanes which are typically going to slots dedicated for video cards.

modern processors still need a southbridge because it's difficult to incorporate some things in the processor due to different manufacturing processes (for example memory used to store bios is difficult to create in 14nm process, the bios chips are still made at 350nm or something like that)

It's not called southbridge anymore, intel calls it PCH. 

Anyway, these days, this southbrige is like a network switch, as in it connects to the cpu using a few pci-e lanes and inside the chip there's pci-e lanes creates and various things are connected to these pci-e lanes, plus the other i/o stuff (monitoring temperatures voltages, connection to superIO chip that does ps/2 , serial), connection to bios...

 

In servers there's still a northbridge because that chip can sometimes be used as an in-between for motherboards with 2 or more cpu sockets and.... well, you could have one northbridge on boards with one cpu socket, another on 2 socket boards... and so on 

[SupaKomputa]

Its a AMD Opteron server.

HT(hyper transport)2100 is the chipset for that cpu from broadcom.

 

Broadcom HT-2100 and HT-1100 server Supported Processor: Up to four Six-Core or Quad-Core AMD Opteron 8000 Series processors Processor.

 

This is verrrryyy old, like 10 years old at least. Scrap it.

They sell it by the pound in some warehouse.

 

[mikat]

3 minutes ago, Cereal5 said:

Yes, I know

  

a little too hasty with the comments today, sorry!  

[MojangYang]

32 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Its a AMD Opteron server.

HT(hyper transport)2100 is the chipset for that cpu from broadcom.

 

Broadcom HT-2100 and HT-1100 server Supported Processor: Up to four Six-Core or Quad-Core AMD Opteron 8000 Series processors Processor.

 

This is verrrryyy old, like 10 years old at least. Scrap it.

They sell it by the pound in some warehouse.

 

No I bought this server fully functional to experiment with it. I can sell it for at least 100 more bucks