Intel Hub Architecture (IHA), also known as Accelerated Hub Architecture (AHA) was

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

's architecture for the 8xx family of

chipset In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components in one or more integrated circuits known as a "Data Flow Management System" that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. It is usually found on t ...

s, starting in 1999 with the Intel 810. It uses a

memory controller The memory controller is a digital circuit that manages the flow of data going to and from the computer's main memory. A memory controller can be a separate chip or integrated into another chip, such as being placed on the same die or as an in ...

hub (MCH) that is connected to an

I/O controller hub I/O Controller Hub (ICH) is a family of Intel southbridge microchips used to manage data communications between a CPU and a motherboard, specifically Intel chipsets based on the Intel Hub Architecture. It is designed to be paired with a second s ...

(ICH) via a 266 MB/s bus. The MCH chip supports memory and

AGP AGP may refer to: Science and technology * Accelerated Graphics Port, a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a graphics card to a computer's motherboard * Advance Game Port, a third-party GameCube accessory * Aerosol-generating proce ...

(replaced by

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common m ...

in 9xx series chipsets), while the ICH chip provides connectivity for

PCI PCI may refer to: Business and economics * Payment card industry, businesses associated with debit, credit, and other payment cards ** Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for credit card processors * Prov ...

(revision 2.2 before ICH5 series and revision 2.3 since ICH5 series), USB (version 1.1 before ICH4 series and version 2.0 since ICH4 series), sound (originally

AC'97 AC'97 (''Audio Codec '97;'' also MC'97 for ''Modem Codec '97'') is an audio codec standard developed by Intel Architecture Labs in 1997. The standard was used in motherboards, modems, and sound cards. The specification covers two types of comp ...

, Azalia added in ICH6 series), IDE hard disks (supplemented by

Serial ATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standar ...

since ICH5 series, fully replaced IDE since ICH8 series for desktops and ICH9 series for notebooks) and

LAN Lan or LAN may also refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in sp ...

(uncommonly activated on desktop motherboards and notebooks, usually independent LAN controller were placed instead of PHY chip). Intel claimed that, because of the high-speed channel between the sections, the IHA was faster than the earlier northbridge/ southbridge design, which hooked all low-speed ports to the PCI bus. The IHA also optimized data transfer based on data type.

Next generation

Intel Hub Interface 2.0 was employed in Intel's line of E7xxx server chipsets. This new revision allowed for dedicated data paths for transferring greater than 1.0 GB/s of data to and from the MCH, which support I/O segments with greater reliability and faster access to high-speed networks.

Current status

IHA is now considered obsolete and no longer used, being superseded by the

Direct Media Interface In computing, Direct Media Interface (DMI) is Intel's proprietary link between the northbridge and southbridge on a computer motherboard. It was first used between the 9xx chipsets and the ICH6, released in 2004. Previous Intel chipsets had ...

architecture. The

Platform Controller Hub The Platform Controller Hub (PCH) is a family of Intel's single-chip chipsets, first introduced in 2009. It is the successor to the Intel Hub Architecture, which used two chips - a northbridge and southbridge, and first appeared in the Intel ...

(PCH) providing most of the features previously seen in ICH chips while moving memory, graphics and PCI Express controllers to the CPU, introduced with the Intel 5 Series chipsets in 2009. This chipset architecture is still used in desktops, in some notebooks it is going to be replaced by SoC processor designs.

References

External links

First Intel chipset to use IHA
{{Intel technology Hub Architecture Computer buses