What is motherboard II Introduction to motherboard

Topics covered: What is motherboard, motherboard short note, motherboard, major components of motherboard, motherboard details: 

What is motherboard 

Motherboard 

Motherboard is main hardware parts of computer system which contain the vital components of computer. It is also known as the main board Printed Circuit Board (PCB) , system board or main circuit board of a microcomputer. A motherboard connects almost all of the other parts together in a computer . Typically, the motherboard contains the CPU , BIOS, memory, mass storage interfaces, serial and parallel ports, expansion slots, and all the controllers required to control standard peripheral devices, such as the display screen, keyboard, and disk drive. Collectively, all these chips that reside on the motherboard are known as the motherboard's chipset.

Major components of Motherboard

i. Central Processing Unit (CPU) 

The central processing unit (CPU) is the computer and motherboard component that's responsible for interpreting and executing most of the commands from the computer's other hardware and software. It is the brain of a computer which get a hold of program instructions from RAM (input), interprets and processes it (execution ) and then sends back the computed results so that the relevant components can carry out the instructions.  A modern CPU can have billions of microscopic transistors mounted on it. The CPU is typically enclosed by a metallic heat spreader which allows for better heat dissolution. The devices including desktop, laptop, and tablet computers, smartphones as well flat-screen television set use CPU. Intel and AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) are the two most popular CPU manufactures for desktops , laptops and servers where as Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm are big smart phone and tablet CPU makers.

ii. The Bus (System Bus) 

A bus or system bus in computing is a set of physical connections (cables, printed circuits, etc. ) which can be shared by multiple hardware components in order to communicate with one another. The purpose of buses is to reduce the number of 'pathways' needed for communication between the components, by carrying out all communications over a single data channel. This is why the metaphor of a 'data highway' is sometimes used. A bus is characterized by the amount of information that can be transmitted at once. This amount, expressed in bits, corresponds to the number of physical lines over which data is sent simultaneously. A 32- wire ribbon cable can transmit 32 bits in parallel. The term 'width' is used to refer to the number of bits that a bus can transmit at once. There are mainly three types of system buses in computing. 

Data Bus 

Data bus is the most common type of system bus and components of motherboard which is used to transfer data from one of the computer component to another. The number of lines in data bus affects the speed of data transfer between the components. A bus consists of 8, 16, 32 or 64 lines data bus means it can transfer 64 bit of data at once. Data buses are bidirectional and can read and write to and from memory locations. 

Address Bus 

While computers are connected through buses then each component assigned an unique ID which is a address of that component. If one component of the system wants to talk to another component, it uses address bus to communicate. This bus is unidirectional carry information or address of data only in one direction. Basically, it carries address of memory location from microprocessor to the main memory. 

Control Bus 

This bus is used to control signals from one component to another. Lets, take an example to understand the working of control bus, suppose CPU wants to read data from main memory that will use control signals like as acknowledgment signals. Control signals contain Timing Information which specify the time for which a component use data and address bus and Command signals which specify a type of operation. 

iii. Expansion Slots 

An expansion slot refers to any of the slots on a motherboard that can hold an expansion card to expand the computer's functionality like video card, network card, or sound card. 

iv. Cooling Fan 

The CPU is mounted on the motherboard, hidden under the cooling fan and heat sink. It is a component that draws heat away from a CPU chip and other hot-running chips such as a graphics processor Unit (GPU) etc. 

v. CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) Battery 

The CMOS Battery also called a Real Time Clock (RTC) which maintains the clock function and any settings saved in the CMOS storage. It is an on-board battery powered semiconductor chip inside computers that stores information. This information ranges from the system time and date to system hardware settings for the computer. 

vi. ROM BIOS (ROM Basic Input Output System) 

The ROM BIOS chip contains a small collection of programs (software) which are permanently stored on the motherboard and used for example, when the PC starts up. It is the set or routines stored in read-only memory that enable a computer to start the operating system and to communicate with the various devices in the system, such as disk drives, keyboard, monitor, printer and communication ports.