northbridge
Intel has developed a bridge architecture for chipsets, which mainly consists of two chips: the northbridge and the southbridge.
The Northbridge, also known as Memory ControllerHub( MCH), is responsible for high-speed data transfer. It provides the connection of the central processing unit( CPU) to the system and controls the main memory( RAM), the AGP bus, Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), and the PCI bus, Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI). It is connected via the PCI bus or, in newer architectures, via a separate high-speed bus, which may well have data transfer rates of 500 MB/s, 1 GB/s or even several gigabytes per second.