Motherboard

A motherboard is a printed circuit board (PCB) used to connect all the major components of a computer.

Northbridge

The Northbridge is a part of the chipset on the motherboard.  It connects all the fast components together (i.e. CPU, the RAM, the graphics card and the South Bridge).  The north-bridge can contain a memory controller which manages the flow of data going to and from the main memory.  Some north bridges may also contain an integrated graphics controller (onboard graphics).

South Bridge

The south bridge is part of the chipset on the motherboard.  It connects the slower components, external buses, USB, etc. to the North Bridge.

Front-Side Bus (FSB)

The front-side bus is the bus that carries data between the CPU and the RAM.

It is made up of three parts:

• 1. Control Bus - Used to transfer instructions CPU to RAM

  2. Address Bus - Used to transfer memory addresses CPU to RAM

  3. Data Bus - Used to transfer the actual data being processed (Both directions)

It is an ageing technology.  Many modern CPUs now contain a memory controller (i.e. the Northbridge does not control CPU-RAM communication) and communicate with RAM directly.

Quad-Pumping

Pumping, when referring to computer systems, is simply how many times per clock cycle data is being transmitted. Early types of system memory (RAM), such as SDRAM, transmitted data on only the peaks of the cycles. With the advent of double data rate synchronous dynamic RAM or DDR SDRAM, the data was transmitted on both the peak and the trough of the cycle. However, quad-pumping has been used for a while for the front side bus (FSB) of a computer system. This works by transmitting data at the peak, trough, and zeroes of each cycle.