What is the internal structure of the chip? What is the role and function of a chipset compared to a chip?

What is the chip?

     A "chip" is a small piece of silicon containing an integrated circuit, often part of a computer or other electronic device. chip, or microcircuit, microchip, integrated circuit in electronics, is a way of miniaturizing circuits, usually on the surface of a semiconductor wafer. The aforementioned integrated circuit manufactured on the surface of semiconductor chip is also called thin-film integrated circuit. Another thick-film hybrid integrated circuit is a miniaturized circuit composed of independent semiconductor equipment and passive components integrated into the substrate or circuit board.

What is the internal structure of the chip?

System level
     Take mobile phone as an example, the whole mobile phone is a complex circuit system, it can play games, can make phone calls, can listen to music and so on, its internal structure is composed of a plurality of semiconductor chips and resistance, inductance, capacitance are interconnected, known as system level. (Of course, with the development of technology, the technology to put an entire system on a single chip has been around for years -- SoC technology)

Module level

     In the whole system is divided into many functional modules to do their own duties. Some manage the power supply, some communicate, some display, some sound, some control the overall computing, and so on. We call this the module level. Each of these modules is a huge field, with countless human wisdom.

                                                           

Register Transfer stage (RTL)

     Each module is an example of a digital circuit module that accounts for a large proportion of the entire system (it is dedicated to logical operations, processing electrical signals are discrete 0 and 1). It consists of registers and combinatorial logic circuits.

     A register is a circuit structure that can temporarily store a logical value. It needs a clock signal to control the length of time the logical value is stored. In practical application, the clock is needed to measure the length of time, and the clock signal is also needed to coordinate the arrangement in the circuit. The clock signal is a periodic stable rectangular wave. In reality, a move in a second is a basic time scale, and a rectangular wave oscillating a period in a circuit is a time scale in their world. Circuit elements act accordingly according to this time scale, fulfilling their obligations.

     Combinatorial logic is a combination of "AND", "OR", "NOT" logic gates.A complex functional module is made up of these many registers and combination logic. This level is called the register transfer level.

Gate level

     Registers in the register transfer stage are actually composed of and or illogical, subdividing it into and, or, or illogical, and then reach the gate level (they are like doors, blocking/allowing electrical signals in and out, hence the name).

Stage of transistor

     Whether digital or analog circuits, to the lowest level is the transistor level. All logic gates (and, or, not, and not, or not, xOR, same or so on) are made of transistors. So integrated circuits from the macro to the micro, to the bottom layer, full of transistors and the wires that connect them.

     The bipolar transistor (BJT) was used more in the early days, commonly known as the transistor. It is connected with resistance, power supply, capacitance, itself has the function of amplifying signal. Like stacking wood, it can be used to construct a wide variety of circuits, such as switches, voltage/current source circuits, logic gate circuits mentioned above, filters, comparators, adders and even integrators. The circuit constructed by BJT is called TTL(Transistor-TransistorLogic). The circuit symbol for BJT looks like this

                                                                               

                                                                            BJT Indicates the circuit symbol

     However, the appearance of metal-oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) has swept the IC field with its excellent electrical characteristics and ultra-low power consumption. In addition to the analog circuit BJT figure, basically now integrated circuits are composed of MOS tubes. In the same way, thousands of circuits can be built from it. And it itself can be properly connected for resistance, capacitance and other basic circuit components. The circuit symbols of a MOSFET are as follows:

                                                         

                                                                              MOSFET circuit symbol

     As mentioned above, the manufacture of a chip in real industry is actually a process of making thousands of transistors. But in reality the hierarchy is reversed, starting at the bottom of the transistor and working its way up.

What is the chipset?

     A Chipset is a group of integrated circuit "chips" that work together. It connects the microprocessor, the heart of the computer, to the rest of the machine and is an important part of the motherboard. In the computer world, the term "chipset" usually refers specifically to the chips found on a computer's motherboard or expansion card. When discussing personal computers based on Intel's Pentium class processors, the term chipset usually refers to the two main chips on the motherboard: the north bridge and the South bridge.

                                                               

What is the function of the chipset?

     Chipset is the core component of the motherboard, and the motherboard chipset almost determines all the functions of the motherboard. According to the different arrangement position on the motherboard, it is usually divided into north bridge chip and south bridge chip.

North bridge chip

     It provides support for CPU type and frequency, system cache, motherboard system bus frequency, memory management (memory type, capacity and performance), video card slot specifications, ISA/PCI/AGP slots, ECC error correction, etc.

South bridge chip

     It provides support for I/O, provides support for KBC (keyboard controller), RTC (real-time clock controller), USB (Universal serial bus), Ultra DMA/33(66)EIDE data transmission mode and ACPI (Advanced Energy Management), and decides the type and number of expansion slots, the type and number of expansion interfaces.

Highly integrated chipset

     Greatly improve the reliability of the system chip, reduce the failure, reduce the production cost. For example, some chipsets that include functions such as 3D accelerated display (integrated display chip) and AC'97 sound decoding also determine the display performance and audio playback performance of computer systems.

Identification of chipsets

     The Intel440BX chipset, for example, has an Intel 82443BX chip in its north bridge, which is usually located near the CPU slot on the motherboard. Because of the high heat output of the chip, the chip is equipped with a heat sink. The Southbridge chip is located near the ISA and PCI slots. The chip name is Intel 82371EB. The other chipsets are arranged in basically the same position. There is also a gap in performance between different chipsets.