Chipset

In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components on one or more integrated circuits that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals.

Because it controls communications between the processor and external devices, the chipset plays a crucial role in determining system performance.

In home computers, game consoles, and arcade hardware of the 1980s and 1990s, the term chipset was used for the custom audio and graphics chips.

In x86-based personal computers, the term chipset often refers to a specific pair of chips on the motherboard: the northbridge and the southbridge.

The northbridge links the CPU to very high-speed devices, especially RAM and graphics controllers, and the southbridge connects to lower-speed peripheral buses (such as PCI or ISA).

Some of their innovations included the integration of PCI bridge logic, the GraphiCore 2D graphics accelerator and direct support for synchronous DRAM, the forerunner of DDR SDRAM memory.

The southbridge handled "everything else", generally lower-speed peripherals and board functions (the largest being hard disk and storage connectivity) such as USB, parallel and serial communications.

[3] Before 2003, any interaction between a CPU and main memory or an expansion device such as a graphics card(s) — whether AGP, PCI or integrated into the motherboard — was directly controlled by the northbridge IC on behalf of the processor.

[9] AMD server CPUs adopt a self contained system on chip design instead which doesn't require a chipset.