What is HyperTransport?

DTM 13

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I have an amd athlon64 3000+ venice. The box says it has HyperTransport. What is that and is it something you have to enable( like in bios ) :confused:
 
Sorry!! I am a noob.( no excuse ) I found a thread on here that explained it. thanks
 
It's alright. But to answer your BIOS thing, is is always enabled. HyperTransport is FSB...should it...
 
It's a new architecture that AMD developed to replace the 'old' ways of the North Bridge/South bridge system.

In your computer system, your motherboard has what is called a chipset. This Chipset is what is used by the CPU to comunicate to other components of the system. In non-Hypertransport the Chipset itself is in 99% of times a combination of 2 major chips. One called the Southbridge, and one called the Northbridge. The Northbridge can be thought of as the more 'powerful' chip as it deals with the fast comunication between the CPU, AGP, the Memory controller and the link to the southbridge. The Northbridge does this comunication with the memory with a bus called the FRONT SIDE BUS. Technically speaking, the Northbridge communicates with the CPU with a single Bus what is called the Back Side Bus - call it the Front Side Bus, everyone else does except the chip makers themselves. The AGP port (if it is AGP) is also controlled by the Northbridge. In essence, the Northbridge handles all the High Speed bus's between the fastest core components (CPU, Memory, AGP - if installed) and provides a link to the southbridge (Information about southbridge near end of post)

AMD's Hypertransport bus is designed to replace the usual Front Side Bus model as the basis to comunicate to the Northbridge and hence other high speed core components such as the Memory. In a AMD 64 system, the motherboard may only have one chip for it's shipset, some do have two (in essance, North and a South bridge). This Chip comunicates with the CPU using a BUS called the Hypertransport bus. It is essentually a Front Side Bus but does not deal with the memory. The memory itself is handled by a Memory controller built into the AMD CPU. This provides a major performance boast as the link between memory and the CPU does not need to share the bandwith with another component such as the northbridge - such as the the other case, and also improves latency times. The hypertransport Bus is also full duplex, ie, data can be passed in both directions at the same time to and from the CPU. This is just a recent feature on the latest North and South bridge setups.

In well, there's your explination. Really, just a souped up FSB with the exception of memory on the same BUS - that is acessed directly by the CPU. This all causes a decent performance increase.

SOUTHBRIDGE

Basically, all this is, is the chip that provides a link to all the slower bus's. Such as your PCI bus (that is the bus the PCI Slots use, surprisingly :p), USB bus and other itegrated devices such as the IDE controllers, Serial, Parallel, PS/2 etc, etc, etc. PCI Express is sometimes handled with the southbridge, but in some setups a function of the Northbridge. Northbridges and Southbridges can often be mixed and matched to provide a variety of motherboard solutions for a variety of proposed systems. In some cases, different brands of Chips can be mixed. It should be noted, that in single chip solutions both the functions of the Northbridge and Southbridge are combined - most common in AMD 64 setups.

Hope that helps!
 
connchri said:
It's a new architecture that AMD developed to replace the 'old' ways of the North Bridge/South bridge system.

In your computer system, your motherboard has what is called a chipset. This Chipset is what is used by the CPU to comunicate to other components of the system. In non-Hypertransport the Chipset itself is in 99% of times a combination of 2 major chips. One called the Southbridge, and one called the Northbridge. The Northbridge can be thought of as the more 'powerful' chip as it deals with the fast comunication between the CPU, AGP, the Memory controller and the link to the southbridge. The Northbridge does this comunication with the memory with a bus called the FRONT SIDE BUS. Technically speaking, the Northbridge communicates with the CPU with a single Bus what is called the Back Side Bus - call it the Front Side Bus, everyone else does except the chip makers themselves. The AGP port (if it is AGP) is also controlled by the Northbridge. In essence, the Northbridge handles all the High Speed bus's between the fastest core components (CPU, Memory, AGP - if installed) and provides a link to the southbridge (Information about southbridge near end of post)

AMD's Hypertransport bus is designed to replace the usual Front Side Bus model as the basis to comunicate to the Northbridge and hence other high speed core components such as the Memory. In a AMD 64 system, the motherboard may only have one chip for it's shipset, some do have two (in essance, North and a South bridge). This Chip comunicates with the CPU using a BUS called the Hypertransport bus. It is essentually a Front Side Bus but does not deal with the memory. The memory itself is handled by a Memory controller built into the AMD CPU. This provides a major performance boast as the link between memory and the CPU does not need to share the bandwith with another component such as the northbridge - such as the the other case, and also improves latency times. The hypertransport Bus is also full duplex, ie, data can be passed in both directions at the same time to and from the CPU. This is just a recent feature on the latest North and South bridge setups.

In well, there's your explination. Really, just a souped up FSB with the exception of memory on the same BUS - that is acessed directly by the CPU. This all causes a decent performance increase.

SOUTHBRIDGE

Basically, all this is, is the chip that provides a link to all the slower bus's. Such as your PCI bus (that is the bus the PCI Slots use, surprisingly :p), USB bus and other itegrated devices such as the IDE controllers, Serial, Parallel, PS/2 etc, etc, etc. PCI Express is sometimes handled with the southbridge, but in some setups a function of the Northbridge. Northbridges and Southbridges can often be mixed and matched to provide a variety of motherboard solutions for a variety of proposed systems. In some cases, different brands of Chips can be mixed. It should be noted, that in single chip solutions both the functions of the Northbridge and Southbridge are combined - most common in AMD 64 setups.

Hope that helps!

Nicely said. Do I hear rep points?
 
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