Fried brain! sheesh

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Mike Myers recommends remembering them, what a....

 

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er...good luck

grim

 

As far as i remember this is incorrect. Well, half correct, half wrong. Reason being is that the MMC is built into the CPU on AMD chips. Correct me if i am wrong but i am studying for the test as well and i just remember this as being part of the AMD CPU setup. I think that this is the reason that AMD started using performance numbers as the MMC was built into the CPU and therefor did not have to wait as long as the Intel CPUs had to so the AMD were faster as a result of this. Only faster as far as code execution not for MHz.
Correct me if i am wrong please as i live by this assumption now.

Oh, by the way. Nice site. The first forum i have come accross that i will stay with.

 

Its really quite simple isn't it ? A chipset is a set of chips ! They work together to get stuff done, the exact way they do this and the architecture depends on the context.

A memory controller controls access to memory, it can be on chip (on the processor die) or off chip, the exact details will again depend on context, the architecture, the memory type SIMM/DIMM, RAMBUS, DDR etc.

I would have answered 'C', as the address bus selects the memory slot from which to read/write the data using the data bus.

PC architecture is a dog, its cludge after cludge for 10+ years. Only now are we nearing getting to the point where we have fixed some of the issues... The pentium was a marked improvement in CPU arch, the NVidia chipsets put a stop to the voodoo rubbish, ISA/EISA replaced by PCI, various problems with memory layout and drive size/access over the years, hardly any IRQ lines, legacy BIOs, I'm sure an electronics grad could give a fuller explanation...

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/size.htm

I'd look elsewhere if you wanna learn good design and architecture, the PC works largely because good practices from elsewhere have been retrofitted or 'grafted' on over the years, the superscaler processor core but the old CISC instruction set ontop for example...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1911610

 

Before you try and understand the concept of a chipset, you should understand what a *chip* is.

Originally electronics were a collection of separate semiconductors (say transistors for simplicity sake) that worked together in a *set* to perform a particular function. For example, an amplifier.

As time went by, it became possible to miniturise the transistors and etch dozens of them into a tiny slice of silicone. This was known as an *Integrated Circuit* or IC. These components were commonly refered to as chips.

Progressively more and more semiconductor components were able to be etched into a single chip and the functions became more and more complex.

So, now we have a set of chips (chipset), that work together to perform the tasks that we know the motherboard can do. Northbridge/Southbridge.

 

Fair point bluerise !

I would advise people read abount pnp layers and doping, not the kind ben johnson does !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrinsic_semiconductor

A transistor is a semiconductor comprised of layers of compounds with different properties. Logic circuits are built up of transistors. Transistors typically are used together to make logic gates (AND, OR, XOR, NAND etc). Put enough logic gates together you get higher level logic blocks like ALU's etc. Put enough of these together you get a chip.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_gate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_logic_unit


Today we even have programable gate arrays, this is the chip designers equivalent of breadboard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA

Alternatively they can use a logic simulator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_simulation

Moores law states a lot of stuff, not just that stuff gets cheaper and faster ! It makes observations about chip density and yield which largely affect how chipsets get assimilated or broken down depending on the situation.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/moore.ars/5

I've posted other stuff before on moores law and also on Richard Fenymans Theory of Computation.

 

yes you are right but if you break it down into sections how I put it is how it goes.