Motherboard chipset

A chipset is a core component of a motherboard. It is usually divided into a north bridge chip and a southbridge chip according to the arrangement position on the mainboard. The Northbridge chip provides support for CPU type and frequency, memory type and maximum capacity, ISA/PCI/AGP slots, and ECC error correction. Southbridge provides support for KBC (Keyboard Controller), RTC (Real-Time Clock Controller), USB (Universal Serial Bus), Ultra DMA/33(66)EIDE data transfer, and ACPI (Advanced Energy Management) . The North Bridge chip plays a dominant role, also known as the Host Bridge.

The biggest market share for mobile chipset is still Intel. Of course, there are also a lot of vendors involved in chipset competition. Taiwan Chipset Siberia SIS, VIA VIA, ALi ALI, and graphic display chips overlord ATI, NVIDIA, the competition between them is becoming increasingly fierce.

For Centrino, Intel introduced the INTEL 855 series chipset. The Intel 855 series mobile chipset includes an independent Intel 855PM and Intel 855GM.Intel 855GM integrated graphics graphics chip integrates an improved Extreme Graphics2 graphics core with built-in graphics The INTEL 855GM chipset is mainly used in primary Centrino notebooks, while the INTEL 855PM chipset mainly matches strong discrete graphics and high-frequency Centrino processors in high-end products. Intel Pentium 4-M and Celeron 4-M support Intel 852 and Intel 845 series chipsets. Of these Intel products, the performance of the Intel 852 is excellent, and it is also the most popular chipset for many P4-M models.

Matching Centrino's chipset In addition to INTEL, currently only SiS has introduced a corresponding chipset, not long ago in SiS released a new notebook-specific chipset supporting Centrino architecture. The chip sets released by SiS are the independent chips, SiS648MX and SiSM661MX, which are designed specifically for the Intel Mobile Pentium-M processor. The SiS M661MX chip and the 648MX chip are the first non-Intel chipset products to receive Intel authorized Centrino processor support. The SiS M661MX and SiS648MX chipsets are excellent both functionally and technically and are comparable to Intel's 855PM and 855GM chipsets. It is believed that the SIS chipset products supporting Centrino Technology will surely set off waves in the market. In the third quarter of 2003, SIS released the SIS 661FX notebook chipset, which supports 800MHz FSB Pentium 4 processors. 661FX also integrates Ultra AGP graphics chip, supports DDR400 maximum resolution can reach 1600 × 1200.

As the licensing policy began to loosen, the Pentium M companion chipset will become more and more abundant. Next VIA VIA also received Intel's authorization, and VIA has preempted to release two chipset products PN800 and PN880 supporting the Pentium M processor platform, respectively, to deal with the entry-level notebook market and high-end products. What is even stronger is that these two products even fully support the Intel Celeron M and Intel Mobile Pentium 4 processors, supporting the 400, 533, and 800 MHz processor front-side bus. In addition, the VIA VIA, which has always been a two-pronged approach, has spared no effort in supporting AMD Athlon64 64-bit mobile processors. The VIA K8T400M chipset is ready for mobile Athlon64.

The ATI and NVIDIA video chip giants are now also involved in the chipset area. For example, we previously known ATI's RADEON IGP 320M for Athlon 4 and Duron mobile processors and the RADEON IGP 340M chipset for Pentium 4-M. . NVIDIA also introduced notebook chipsets supporting AMD Athlon 64 processors. With the involvement of ATI and NVIDIA in the AMD chipset market, AMD's mobile processor companion platform has been greatly enhanced. ALi is also a member of the mobile chipset army. Its products are very characteristic and have certain vendor-specific, but the market share is not very high.

The INTEL motherboard chipset is generally used in high-end and high-end notebooks. This is due to the INTEL mobile chipset product's high stability and low power consumption. However, due to the high price of mobile INTEL motherboard chipsets, the price of notebooks will be directly higher. So some low-end laptops use the chips of Taiwan's SiS. SiS is particularly good at the research and development of high-integrated chips, because the low-end notebook computers are mostly highly integrated. Therefore, the SiS chipset products are also widely used in the industry and the quality and stability of the industry are very good. Although VIA is the three major motherboard chipset manufacturers in Taiwan. However, the focus of VIA has always been on the desktop motherboard chipset, and it is slightly inferior to the dedicated chip for notebook motherboards.