Motherboard

The motherboard, also known as the logic board or main board, is a printed circuit board that houses the internal components of a computer.

These components are mounted on the board and are interconnected by a series of electrical data highways known as busses. These busses connect all the PC’s internal components, external devices and peripherals to the CPU and main memory (DRAM).

The fastest bus of all is the connection between the processor and the Level 1 cache which is on CPU chip itself. Next is the system bus, which links the CPU with the main memory.

Processors using a Dual Independent Bus (DIB) architecture – such as Pentium II – used two independent buses, one for accessing main memory and the other for accessing the Level 2 cache. These are referred to as the frontside bus and the backside bus respectively. The original front-side bus architecture has been replaced by HyperTransport, Intel QuickPath Interconnect or Direct Media Interface in modern CPUs.

Read page 66 of the textbook “Exploring Computer Hardware”.

Go through the lesson content below.