What is Southbridge?

Southbridge is one of the chips based on the chipset architecture of a personal computer motherboard. The south bridge is designed to process low-speed signals and communicate with the central processing unit via the north bridge. The southbridge name of each chipset manufacturer is different. For example, Intel calls it the Input / Output Controller Hub (ICH), NVIDIA calls it MCP, ATI calls it IXP / SB, and AMD also Began to incorporate Fusion APU and give FCH this mark, or Fusion Controller Center, to represent its South Bridge chip. However, in some chipset architectures, the functions of the south bridge are integrated with the north bridge; or some functions are moved to the north bridge, while some south bridge functions are deleted, and the interface functions to be deleted use an additional independent chipset Provide functionality. In this way, there will be only a single chip in the entire chipset architecture, and there will be no other Southbridge chip.

Southbridge chip

Southbridge is based on

Southbridge chip is responsible

As we all know, the predecessor of AMD chipset is ATI chipset. As early as 2006, after the formal acquisition of AMD, AMD began to change some ATI chipset products to the AMD brand, including the CrossFire chipset RD580, RD550, and RD480 for AMD platforms, and AMD launched after the acquisition of ATI Chipset products will no longer use the ATI brand, only

SATA II transfer rate reaches 3GB per second

Some graphics cards will still be named after the ATI brand. It is worth noting that before the merger and acquisition, ATI's motherboard chipset market share was not very high. After the merger, its chipset market share has been steadily increasing, such as the RS690G series chipset, which is now booming, and now Great Fire's 7-series chipsets are products launched after mergers and acquisitions. Below, we will briefly review the previous ATI Southbridge chips.

ATI (the predecessor of AMD Chipset Division) began to enter the Southbridge chip market in 2001. Their first batch of chipset products, ATi-S4 / S5 / S6, are far behind the similar products in the market: S4 supports AC97 sound effects , ATA66 / S5 supports AC97, ATA100 / S6 supports 3D sound effects, USB 2.0, built-in network card, etc ... The backwardness of the Southbridge specifications makes ATI's early chipsets have to use other companies' Southbridge chipsets, such as Yuli Electronic ULI's M1575 of the year.

Southbridge chip

The rapid development of ATI Southbridge chipset started from SB600. The main reason is that we will briefly explain to you later.

First of all, let's take a look at the milestone SB400 in the history of ATI Southbridge chip development.

The SB400 will be connected to the Northbridge through two PCI-E buses. It can support eight USB 2.0 interfaces, four SATA 150 interfaces, and serial hard disks. It also provides RAID 0,1 functions and four ATA-133 drives. . In addition, the SB400 can support 7 PCI expansion slots with 5.1 / 7.1-channel AC'97 high-definition audio output capabilities. In addition, the SB400 does not have any bright spots to watch, it does not even integrate a network controller.

ATI claims that the integration of Gigabit network functions has no advantages in terms of performance or cost compared to the implementation of Gigabit network functions through the PCI Express bus. The RX480 / RS480 chipset is the same as the Intel 925X. As long as the Gigabit LAN is on the PCI-Expree bus, what are the benefits of PCI Express? Its biggest advantage is that it can reach a transmission bandwidth of 500MB / s, which is better than the transmission efficiency. PCI has to be faster and more efficient. The PCI Express Gigabit network function provides a total bidirectional 500MB / s bandwidth for each device. Gigabit or 10/100 Ethernet can be supported through the Northbridge or Southbridge's PCI Express bus. This allows manufacturers to provide high performance based on product positioning needs. Performance or cheap network functions.

Next, let's look at the SB450 South Bridge chip, which is "changing soup without changing medicine".

Compared with the previous SB400, the biggest improvement of the SB450 is to upgrade the AC97 equipment to Azalia codec, which is once again integrated with the multimedia entertainment technology advocated by Intel. Azalia codec, also known as HD music, was originally developed by the Intel Developer Forum. It is expected to replace the old AC97 specification and provide a more flexible and cost-effective real high

Southbridge chip with heat sink

Order sound built-in solution. The Azalia structure can transmit up to 8 channels of audio streaming at 192KHz / 32-bit; AC'97 can only support 6 channels at 48 KHz / 20-bit. The increased bandwidth will bring users a trouble-free music experience in the face of any discerning music function. For storage, the SB450 can provide 2 PATA channels and support 4 PATA devices. The SB450 supports two SATA interfaces at a speed of 1.5GHz, and still cannot support SATA2. RAID supports the most commonly used 0 and 1 modes.

The SB450 supports 8 USB2.0 interfaces. The products tested in this test have 4 USB2.0 interfaces externally. The motherboard provides 4 USB2.0 external interface jumpers. Like the previous generation of the Southbridge chip SB400, it is a pity that the SB450 does not have an integrated network card, so the motherboard must integrate a complete network card chip.

ATI SB600 can be said to be the most successful Southbridge chip in the history of ATI Southbridge development. This has a lot to do with rival NVIDIA's acquisition of ATI Southbridge chip partner ULI:

ATI took a shortcut in chipset development, first developed the Northbridge chip and then developed the Southbridge slowly. This led to the impression that the ATi chipset was generally good for the Northbridge chip, especially in terms of graphics performance, but the Southbridge There are many problems and the specifications are backward, so it can only be used on low-end entry-level products, and the products in the high-end mainstream market are entrusted to the then ULi company to design.

For many years, the motherboard industry has rumored "Be the motherboard and be the South Bridge first." We don't care whether the sentence is right or wrong, but ATI does not follow this rule. The disadvantage of developing chipset begins with the end of NVIDIA's acquisition of ULi. show

SiS Southbridge

In the past, after NVIDIA completed the acquisition of ULi internally, it began to cut off the supply of ATi s South Bridge. At a time, ATi s high-end RD580, RD480 and other Northbridge chips became solitary birds without any corresponding Southbridge to match. SB600 South Bridge is a high specification South Bridge independently designed by ATi to replace ULi M1575. It can be said that it was the product of sniper after NVIDIA acquired ULI. The biggest improvement of SB600 compared with previous products of ATi is the disk performance. The most criticized on the SB400 south bridge is USB performance. SB450 adds HDA sound effects on the basis of fixing some bugs of SB400. The disk performance is still maintained at 1.5 of SB400. Gbps SATA x 4. Therefore, the SB600 has improved the disk performance and added the AHCI interface, so that NCQ technology hard disks using this interface can be supported. In addition, the transmission rate of the SATA interface is increased from the original 1.5Gbps to 3.0Gbps, and RAID 0, 1, 10 is supported. The IDE is reduced to 1 Channel, and the number of USB interfaces is increased to 10.

Third, SB600 / SB700 new and old two generations of Southbridge specifications comparison

Prior to the launch of SB600, AMD's shortcomings in the South Bridge were well known. Because of these defects, AMD had to use the third-party Southbridge solution provided by ULi. After NVIDIA acquired ULi in one fell swoop, AMD's lack of Southbridge was even more serious. Highlighted, and until the launch of the SB600 did not really solve the SB450 / SB460 such as USB performance and other problems that make users feel headaches.

As the storage technology gains new applications and increases in system security requirements, the SB600 is bound to be replaced by newer products. So the SB700 continues the many advantages of the SB600 and came to us. Comparing the specifications of the SB600 and SB700, you can see To no small improvement. First of all, the number of expansion interfaces is further increased. The original 10 USB 2.0 interfaces have now reached 12 USB 2.0 and 2 USB 1.1 interfaces, while the original 4 SATA II interfaces are now added to 6 and can be simultaneously Supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0 + 1, RAID 10, JBOD, and eSATA.

Then there is support for Trusted Platform Module (TPM). "Trusted Platform Module (TPM)" is a trusted security platform module. Through the "TPM" module integrated on the motherboard, the user's personal computer can be protected very securely. . The TPM solution is based on the physical layer and combines a universal authentication-type identity management strategy. Its advent means that complex, difficult to remember and easy to crack user password-based methods are about to be launched on the stage of history. TPM is very common in notebooks and some brand desktop machines. And we know that the SB700 is also designed as a south bridge for notebook platforms, so this design is very popular with notebook users.

But the biggest improvement is that it can support HyperFlash technology. We know that Microsoft

VIA South Bridge Chip

The new generation operating system Vista adds ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive technology to improve the operating system and application startup efficiency through additional storage particles. Intel has long ago added the new Turbo to the new generation Centrino platform Santa Rosa. Memory technology, it is logical for AMD to add the new HyperFlash technology in this generation. This technology will use Samsung's OneNAND Flash module, which reduces the size and effectively reduces the cost. The ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive functions of the new generation Windows Vista operating system can shorten the startup time of the operating system and applications, provide a larger cache capacity for the hard disk, improve the read and write time, reduce the number of hard disk startup and rotation, and reduce the power consumption of the hard disk. , To further improve battery life (it seems that the SB700 was born for the notebook platform), and Intel Turbo Memory technology supports the above two functions, making the performance better when running Vista.

The new HyperFlash technology added by AMD in the SB700 South Bridge will integrate the flash controller circuit with the IDE bus, support Samsung OneNAND chips, support up to four, chip frequency is 80MHz, and the maximum transmission speed of 16Bit interface is 108MB / s, and Claims to be 30% faster than Intel Turbo Memory.

Currently, the modules used by HyperFlash are designed by Molex. PC manufacturers can produce HyperFlash cards by themselves, which can support 512MB, 1GB, and 2GB capacities. Compared to Intel Turbo Memory, they must be produced by Intel. HyperFlash is naturally more attractive. If HyperFlash is marketed, Successful strategy will hopefully force Intel to decentralize Turbo Memory production to PC manufacturers.

summary:

The chipset is the soul of a motherboard. The functions, performance, and technical characteristics of a motherboard are determined by the characteristics of the motherboard chipset. For a long time, the chipset has always been based on the Northbridge and the Southbridge as the auxiliary chip. Because the Northbridge is responsible for connecting to the CPU and memory and graphics cards, the chipset with integrated display functions also integrates the display core in the Northbridge; the Southbridge chip is only responsible for peripheral equipment. Through this article, I believe that everyone has a general understanding and understanding of the AMD platform south bridge chipset. ^[1]