I/O Controller Hub (ICH) is a family of Intel southbridge microchips used to manage data communications between a CPU and a motherboard within Intel chipsets based on Intel's Hub Architecture. It is designed to be paired with a second support chip known as a northbridge. As with any other southbridge, the ICH is used to connect and control peripheral devices.
As CPU speeds increased a bottleneck eventually emerged between between the processor and the motherboard, due to limitations caused by data transmission between the CPU and its support chipset. Accordingly starting with the Intel 5 Series, a new architecture was used where some functions of the north and south bridge chips were moved to the CPU, and others were consolidated into a Platform Controller Hub (PCH).
Read more about I/O Controller Hub: ICH, ICH2, ICH3, ICH4, ICH5, ICH6, ICH7, ICH8, ICH9, ICH10, PCH Architecture
Famous quotes containing the word hub:
“We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. “Strong and Sensitive Cats,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1994)