COMPUTER
ARCHITECTURE
(for Erasmus students)
Assoc.Prof. Stasys Maciulevičius
Computer Dept.
stasys@ecdl.lt
stasys.maciulevicius@ktu.lt
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First systems
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The first personal computer motherboard
has been designed with small and mediumintegration logic
They cover a large area on the
motherboard, energy compsumtion was
relativ high level
Designers observed that certain functions
on your computer are "standard", such as
floppy drive management, direct memory
access or interrupt management
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System chip set
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System chip set or chipset refers to a group of
integrated circuits (or chips), that controls and
manages the exchange of data between the
processor, memory, cache, system bus, peripheral
devices
Such chips are designed to work together. They are
usually marketed as a single product logic
While the data flow is a critical factor in terms of
system operation and greatly affect computer
perfomance, chipset is one of the components with
the greatest impact on the quality of your PC, its
features and perfomance
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System chip set
Previously, computer control and management
were realized using separate chips controllers:
 interrupt controller,
 direct memory access controller,
 bus controller,
 DRAM controller,
 system controller and so on.
Gradualy these controllers were integrated into
the chipset, consisting of two or more chips
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PC chipsets
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A set of chips that provides the interfaces between all of the
PC's subsystems
It provides the buses and electronics to allow the CPU,
memory and input/output devices to interact
PC chipsets, which are housed on one to four chips, include
built-in controllers for almost all common peripherals
The primary components on a PC motherboard are the PC
chipset, CPU, memory, clock, buses and BIOS
A chipset is usually designed to work with a specific family
of microprocessors
Because it controls communications between the processor
and external devices, the chipset plays a crucial role in
determining system performance
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PC/AT chip set
In personal computers the first chipset for the IBM
PC AT was the NEAT chipset for the Intel 80286
CPU
The central chip of the NEAT chipset was 82C206
chip, introduced by in 1986. This chip provided
equivalent functionality to the TTL chips on the
PC/AT's mainboard, namely:
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the 82284 clock generator
the 82288 bus controller
the 8254 Programmable Interval Timer
the two 8259 Programmable Interrupt Controllers
the two 8237 DMA controllers
the NVRAM/RTC chip
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PC/AT chip set
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This set of components comprised most of the
logic (aside from the CPU itself) on a PC/ATcompatible mainboard, and the creation of the
82C206 allowed mainboard manufacturers to
significantly reduce the number of components on,
and thereby the cost of manufacture of, such
mainboards
However, mainboards still required four other
chips, in addition to the 82C206. These other chips
were buffers and memory controllers
These five chips were C&T's CS8220 chipset
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PC chipset
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PC chipsets
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The term chipset often refers to a specific pair of
chips on the motherboard
 the
northbridge and
 the southbridge
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The northbridge links the CPU to very high-speed
devices, especially main memory and graphics
controllers, and the southbridge connects to lowerspeed peripheral buses (such as PCI or ISA)
In many modern chipsets, the southbridge actually
contains some on-chip integrated peripherals, such
as Ethernet, USB, and audio devices
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PC chipsets
Note: This is
schematic
drawing; buses
now are more
advanced
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Intel 865 in Pentium 4
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Intel X58 Express
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Intel X58 Express
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The Intel X58 Express Chipset supports the
latest 45nm Intel Core i7 processor family at
6.4 GT/s and 4.8 GT/s speeds via the Intel
QuickPath Interconnect (Intel QPI)
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Additionally, this chipset delivers dual x16 or
quad x8 PCI Express 2.0 graphics card
support, and support for Intel High
Performance Solid State Drives
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Intel X58 Express
 Supports
such modern technologies, as
High Definition Audio – premium digital
sound, multiple audio streams
 Intel Matrix Storage – with additional hard drives
added, provides quicker access to digital photo,
video and data files with RAID 0, 5, and 10;
greater data protection, eSATA 3Gb/s
 Intel Rapid Recover – recovery point that can be
used to quickly recover a system should a hard
drive fail or if there is massive data corruption
 Intel
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Intel X58 Express
Intel Turbo Memory – innovative cache
designed to improve the responsiveness of
applications, application load times, and system
boot performance
 Serial ATA (SATA) 3 Gb/s – high-speed storage
interface supports faster transfer rate for
improved data access up to six SATA ports
 eSATA – SATA interface designed for use with
external SATA devices; it provides a link for 3
Gb/s data speeds
 USB port disable – enables individual USB
ports to be enabled or disabled as needed
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AMD SR5690/SP5100
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AMD SR5690/SP5100
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Compatible with all AMD embedded processors including
high performance AMD Opteron processors, socketed AM2
low power single and dual-core AMD Athlon processors and
very low power AMD Athlon, AMD Sempron and AMD Turion
ASB1 (BGA) processors
Two I/O bridges can be used in the same system in any
combination
Support both low power and high Tcase, allowing them to be
used in compact designs
Operating System Support for Windows Vista, Windows XP
and XPe, Windows 7 and Windows 7 Embedded, Linux,
Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008
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AMD SR5690/SP5100
I/O Bridge:
 HyperTransportTM 3 Technology
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5.2GT/s peak bandwidth
 Compatible with HT1 processors in HT1 mode
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PCI Express Generation 2
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SR5690 (42 lanes/11 engines)
• Two x16, one x16 + two x8, four x8
• Six x1 configurable in combinations of x1, x2 or x4
• One x4 configurable as x4, x2 or x1
• PCI Express Hot Plug
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AMD SR5690/SP5100
Southbridge:
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PCI 2.3 Interface - up to 6 master devices
Six SATA 2.5 Ports: support for SATA 1.5 and 3.0
compatible devices, RAID 0,1,10, e-SATA,
Hyperflash
IDE Interface - single PATA channel supporting two
devices
High Definition Audio - Unified Audio Architecture
compatible, four independent streams
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Chipsets and graphics
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The most powerful class of GPUs typically interface with the
motherboard by means of an expansion slot such as PCI
Express (PCIe) or AGP and can usually be replaced or
upgraded with relative ease
Integrated graphics solutions are graphics processors that
utilize a portion of a computer's system RAM rather than
dedicated graphics memory
Today's integrated solutions such as the Intel's G45 chipset,
AMD's 780G chipset and NVIDIA's GeForce 8200 are more
than capable of handling 2D graphics from Adobe Flash or
low stress 3D graphics
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Eaglelake chipsets
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Eaglelake chipset found the proper names: Intel p45
for the discrete version and Intel g45 for the
integrated version
This last has the graphic core GMA x4500 with
directX 10 support, which will be three times more
productive than graphic system in chipset intel g33
This chipset will also support interfaces DVI, HDMI
and DisplayPort. The decoding of high quality video
from blu-ray disks and HD DVD will be accelerated
at the hardware level
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Intel G45 Express chipset
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The Intel G45 Express Chipset, with the next-generation Intel
Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD, includes built-in
support for full 1080p high-definition video playback, including
Blu-ray disc movies
This powerful video engine provides users with a rich, new
media experience to deliver smooth HD playback without the
need for add-in video cards or decoders
Intel GMA X4500HD comes with Intel Clear Video
Technology, a combination of video processing hardware and
software technologies designed to enhance the visual
experience
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Intel G45 Express chipset
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AMD 780G chipset
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AMD 780G chipset
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The 780G's IGP (integrated graphics processor) is
actually its strongest feature
The new IGP (officially dubbed the Radeon HD
3200) is a die-shrunk 2400XT part that's been built
directly into the chipset
The 2400XT's 40 SP's (compared to 320 SP's on the
2900XT) made it a weak desktop part, but it should
offer excellent integrated performance
The HD 3200 runs at a 500MHz core clock and is
capable of addressing up to 512MB of system RAM
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