I/O Ports, Graphic Cards Innovation
COURTESY :- vrindawan.in
Wikipedia
I/O Controller Hub (ICH) is a family of Intel south bridge microchips used to manage data communications between a CPU and a motherboard, specifically Intel chip sets based on the Intel Hub Architecture. It is designed to be paired with a second support chip known as a north bridge. As with any other south bridge, the ICH is used to connect and control peripheral devices.
As CPU speeds increased data transmission between the CPU and support chipset, the support chipset eventually emerged as a bottleneck between the processor and the motherboard. Accordingly, starting with the Intel 5 Series, a new architecture was used that incorporated some functions of the traditional north and south bridge chips onto the CPU itself, with the remaining functions being consolidated into a single Platform Controller Hub (PCH). This replaces the traditional two chip setup.
The first version of the ICH was released in June 1999 along with the Intel 810 northbridge. While its predecessor, the PIIX, was connected to the northbridge through an internal PCI bus with a bandwidth of 133 MB/s, the ICH used a proprietary interface (called by Intel Hub Interface) that linked it to the northbridge through an 8-bit wide, 266 MB/s bus.
The Hub Interface was a point-to-point connection between different components on the motherboard. Another design decision was to substitute the rigid North-South axis on the motherboard with a star structure.
Note that, along with the ICH, Intel evolved other uses of the “Hub” terminology. Thus, the northbridge became the Memory Controller Hub (MCH) or if it had integrated graphics (e.g., Intel 810), the Graphics and Memory Controller Hub (GMCH).
Other ICH features include:
- PCI Rev 2.2 compliant with support for 33 MHz PCI operations.
- Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) Support
- Integrated IDE controller for Ultra ATA support
- Integrated I/O APIC supporting 24 interrupt sources
- System Management Bus (SMBus) with support for I²C devices
- AC’97 2.1 Compliant Link
- Low Pin Count (LPC) interface
The ICH came in two flavors:
- 82801AA (ICH) – Ultra ATA/66 support, 6 PCI slots, Alert on LAN support
- 82801AB (ICH0) – Ultra ATA/33 support, 4 PCI slots, no Alert on LANIn early 2000 Intel had suffered a significant setback with the i820 north bridge. Customers were not willing to pay the high prices for RD RAM and either bought i810 or i440BX motherboards or changed to the competition. The hastily developed 82815 north bridge, which supported PC-133 SD RAM, became Intel’s method to recover in the middle range segment.
The ICH1 or the new ICH2 (360 pins) could be placed to the side of the 82815. An ICH2 could also be used with Intel’s 82850 chip set, which, like the 82820 before it, required the use of RD RAM and supported the Pentium 4 CPU. For the first time a Fast Ethernet chip (82559) was integrated into the south bridge, depending upon an external PHY chip.
The PATA interface was accelerated to ATA/100 and the number of USB connections was doubled to four. The integrated AC’97 sound controller gained support for up to six channel sound.
There was also a mobile variant called the ICH2-M.
The following variants existed:
- 82801BA (ICH2)
- 82801BAM (ICH2-M) MobileA graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, GPU, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, or display adapter) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer monitor. Graphics cards are sometimes called discrete or dedicated graphics cards to emphasize their distinction to integrated graphics. A graphics processing unit that performs the necessary computations is the main component of a graphics card, but the acronym “GPU” is sometimes also used to refer to the graphics card as a whole.
Most graphics cards are not limited to simple display output. The graphics processing unit can be used for additional processing, which reduces the load from the central processing unit. Additionally, computing platforms such as Open CL and CUDA allows using graphics cards for general-purpose computing. Applications of general-purpose computing on graphics cards include AI training, cryptocurrency mining, and molecular simulation.
Usually, a graphics card comes in the form of a printed circuit board (expansion board) which are to be inserted into an expansion slot. Others may have dedicated enclosures, and they are connected to the computer via a docking station or a cable. These are known as external GPUs (eGPUs).
Graphics cards are often preferred over integrated graphics for increased performance.
Graphics cards historically supported different computer display standards as they evolved.
In the late 1980s the like of Radius produced graphics cards for the Apple Macintosh II with discrete 2D Quick Draw capabilities.
3dfx Interactive was one of the first companies to develop a consumer-facing GPU with 3D acceleration (with the Voodoo series) and the first to develop a graphical chip set dedicated to 3D, but without 2D support (which therefore required the presence of a 2D card to work).
Nowadays, the majority of modern graphics cards are built with either AMD-sourced or Nvidia-sourced graphics chips. Most graphics cards offer various functions such as 3D rendering, 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, and the ability to connect multiple monitors (multi-monitor). Graphics cards also have sound card capabilities to output sound along with video output for connected TVs or monitors with integrated speakers.
Within the industry, graphics cards are sometimes called graphics add-in-boards, abbreviated as AIBs, with the word “graphics” usually omitted.
As an alternative to the use of a graphics card, video hardware can be integrated into the motherboard, CPU, or a system-on-chip as integrated graphics. Motherboard-based implementations are sometimes called “on-board video”. Some motherboards support using both integrated graphics and the graphics card simultaneously to feed separate displays. The main advantages of integrated graphics are: a low cost, compactness, simplicity, and low energy consumption. Integrated graphics often has less performance than a graphics card because the graphics processing unit inside integrated graphics needs to share system resources with the CPU. On the other hand, a graphics card has a separate random access memory (RAM), cooling system, and dedicated power regulators. A graphics card can offload work and reduce memory-bus-contention from the CPU and system RAM, therefore the overall performance for a computer could improve in addition to increased performance in graphics processing. Such improvements to performance can be seen in video gaming, 3D animation, and video editing.
Both AMD and Intel have introduced CPUs and motherboard chipsets which support the integration of a GPU into the same die as the CPU. AMD advertises CPUs with integrated graphics under the trademark Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), while Intel brands similar technology under “Intel Graphics Technology”.
As the processing power of graphics cards increased, so did their demand for electrical power. Current high-performance graphics cards tend to consume large amounts of power. For example, the thermal design power (TDP) for the GeForce Titan RTX is 280 watts. When tested with video games, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founder’s Edition averaged 300 watts of power consumption. While CPU and power supply manufacturers have recently aimed toward higher efficiency, power demands of graphics cards continued to rise, with the largest power consumption of any individual part in a computer. Although power supplies have also increased their power output, the bottleneck occurs in the PCI-Express connection, which is limited to supplying 75 watts.
Modern graphics cards with a power consumption of over 75 watts usually include a combination of six-pin (75 W) or eight-pin (150 W) sockets that connect directly to the power supply. Providing adequate cooling becomes a challenge in such computers. Computers with multiple graphics cards may require power supplies over 750 watts. Heat extraction becomes a major design consideration for computers with two or more high-end graphics cards.
As of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series, Ampere architecture, a custom flashed RTX 3090 named “Hall of Fame” has been recorded to reach a peak power draw as high as 630 watts. A standard RTX 3090 can peak at up to 450 watts. The RTX 3080 can reach up to 350 watts, while a 3070 can reach a similar, if not slightly lower peak power draw. Ampere cards are the first cards to feature a pass through cooler design to dissipate as much heat as possible, especially with large power consumptions.