Question regarding Computer bottleneck on the bus

Post by **floodhound2** » 12 Mar 2007, 13:37

I was thinking about a PC and wanted some of your input concerning the slowest part of a computer. I was thinking that the Buses needed some attention.

My idea and I know I have had many, is to design a computer motherboard with a fiber optic front side bus, memory bus and address bus. I have started a schematic of a computer motherboard and wanted some feedback on the idea before I become obsessed and go thought with it.

Post by **pseudo_opcode** » 12 Mar 2007, 14:39

oh actually i m in a hurry but this is an interesting topic.. i think the slowest part is Hard disk,but more on this later when i m done with my tests..

Post by **Stavros** » 12 Mar 2007, 15:19

I'm with Pseudo on this one. Hard Drive. Untill we get Solid State Hard Drives, we'll still be limited by disk and spindle.

Post by **floodhound2** » 12 Mar 2007, 21:13

Yes I was thinking the hard drive would be the slowest device on the chain of devices. However, I tend to believe that the hard disk is going to be phased out in the near up and coming years with a solid state type of component. Possibly like a jump drive, or flash drive that will retain on the motherboard.

Thus, then might the bus be the slowest on the chain?

Post by **Gogeta70** » 13 Mar 2007, 14:22

The fan.

Well, let's look at this. The computer runs from a "South bridge" and a "North bridge". The north bridge takes higher priority on the list of devices, usually including the PCI-E/AGP expansion slots to be the "first round" for the processor and RAM.

For everything else pretty much, it runs on the south bridge. Everything there is of lower priority than anything on the north bridge. Because the south bridge has so many things connected to it, it uses something called the "interrupt request" wire(s), which tells the processor that a device with whatever ID is needing a few cycles. So, i'd assume that the interrupt request makes things a bit slower. Just a thought though, i don't know what your goal is.

Post by **floodhound2** » 13 Mar 2007, 15:38

Good point gogeta70. My idea was to simply use fiber as a communication interface versus a data bus with traces.

I might be barking up a tree that would rather be pissed on.