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. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

'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 the mo ...

s, starting in 1999 with the

Intel 810 The Intel 810 chipset was released by Intel in early 1999 with the code-name "Whitney" as a platform for the P6-based Socket 370 CPU series, including the Pentium III and Celeron processors. Some motherboard designs include Slot 1 for older Int ...

. 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 int ...

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 su ...

(ICH) via a 266 MB/s bus. The MCH chip supports memory and AGP (replaced by PCI Express in 9xx series chipsets), while the ICH chip provides connectivity for PCI (revision 2.2 before ICH5 series and revision 2.3 since ICH5 series),

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

(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 compo ...

, Azalia added in ICH6 series), IDE hard disks (supplemented by Serial ATA since ICH5 series, fully replaced IDE since ICH8 series for desktops and ICH9 series for notebooks) and LAN (uncommonly activated on desktop motherboards and notebooks, usually independent LAN controller were placed instead of

PHY PHY is an abbreviation for the physical layer of the OSI model and refers to the circuitry required to implement physical layer functions. PHY or Phy may also refer to: * Phy, the drug methadone * Phetchabun Airport (IATA code), Thailand See ...

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 us ...

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 5 ...

(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 Intel 5 Series is a computing architecture introduced in 2008 that improves the efficiency and balances the use of communication channels in the motherboard. The architecture consists primarily of a central processing unit (CPU) (connected to the ...

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