What Is A Motherboard?
In the this part of my Computer Series we’re going to explore what computer hardware is and what it specifically does. As previously stated in the first part computer hardware consists of the physical parts that you can touch and handle, this includes, but is not limited to: motherboard, processor, memory, hard drive, video card, sound card, power supply, case, monitor.
Computer Motherboard
The motherboard is the primary circuit board in a computer. Also known as the system board, logic board, main board, and sometimes abbreviated as mobo. It contains all the connections between each part, and helps them communicate between each other. All the other parts plug into the motherboard and the motherboard makes sure these part are communicating flawlessly. A good motherboard does not speed up your system, but it makes sure that the computer is stable and reliable. There are 3 main form factors (sizings) for motherboards, ATX, miniATX, and BTX.
Each of these connections is called a bus. Buses are a set of signal pathways that allow information and signals to travel between components inside or outside a computer. There are many different kinds of buses. The external data bus, or system bus connects the CPU to the chipset and is usually 64-bit. There’s also the address bus that connects the RAM (Random Access Memory) to the CPU (Central Processing Unit), this is also 64-bit. The expansion buses connect I/O (Input/Output) ports and expansion slots to the chipset. There are two different classifications of expansion buses, internal and external. The internal expansion buses include ISA (Industry Standard Architecture), AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port), and PCI(Peripheral Component Interconnect) slots. The external expansion buses include serial, parallel, USB (Universal Serial Bus), and Firewire ports. The main difference between the two kinds of expansion buses is that the internal connects components on the inside of your computer, and the external connects components on the outside of your computer.
A chipset is a set of controller chips that monitor and direct traffic on the motherboard between buses, it usually consists of two or more chips for complete functionality. There are two basic designs of chipsets, first is the northbridge/southbridge design and the second is the hub chipset. In the first kind the northbridge chips connects a CPU to the memory, the PCI bus, level 2 cache, and AGP bus. The southbridge connects slower buses, like ISA, IDE and USB, and controls all of the computers I/O functions, basically everything except the memory, PCI, and AGP. The hub chipset contains a memory controller hub (north bridge), I/O controller hub(south bridge), and a SuperIO chip. The superIO chip connects legacy devices, and parallel and serial ports.
The motherboard also contains the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) firmware code that is run when your turn on your computer to identify and test the connected hardware. It also contains the CMOS, which is the BIOS setup program that allows you to change the basic settings and functions of the motherboard.
Continue on to What Is A Processor?
Head back to What Is A Computer
February 19th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Allen Taylor
February 19th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Good job.
If I were you I’d divided the post in more subposts, ideally one for each component. I think that the post is too long.
February 19th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
That’s what I was thinking, but I wasn’t too sure, maybe I’ll just add a little navigation thing at the top so you can jump from section to section.
February 19th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
@Allen Taylor, thank you for subscribing. I didn’t really think anyone would find me from Technorati, I’ve tried to find good things to write about via Technorati that hasn’t been covered by the absolute blog authorities. I seem to have a hard time just finding something good to read that’s been written by up and coming blogs.