Southbridge (computing)

With the Intel 5 Series chipset in 2008, the southbridge became redundant and was replaced by the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) architecture introduced.

Based on its Chiplet design, AMD Ryzen processors also integrated some southbridge functions, such as some USB and SATA/NVMe interfaces.

Likewise the southbridge extends to the south of the PCI bus backbone and bridges to less performance-critical I/O capabilities such as the disk interface, audio, etc.

The CPU is connected to the chipset via a fast bridge (the northbridge) located north of other system devices as drawn.

The northbridge is connected to the rest of the chipset via a slow bridge (the southbridge) located south of other system devices as drawn.