What Does Northbridge Mean?
The northbridge is one of the two chips, or integrated circuits (ICs), within the chipset on the motherboard. The other chip is called the southbridge. Each chip has a specific set of tasks and communicates between the CPU and external devices through buses.
The northbridge connects the southbridge to the CPU. It is often referred to as the memory controller hub. It handles the faster components on the motherboard, including RAM, ROM, basic input/output system (BIOS), accelerated graphics port (AGP), PCI Express, and the southbridge chip as well as the CPU. It also controls the CPU cache, if it is located on the motherboard.