Assignment

Submitted To Mam Ayesha

Submitted By Aqsa Shakir
Registration No. 70099829
Subject Intro to computer
Semester BSMUT(5 Th)
Session Fall(2021)
THE UNIVERSITY OF LAHORE

CONTENT
What is a Motherboard?
A motherboard is one of the most essential parts of a computer
system. It holds together many of the crucial components of a
computer, including the central processing unit (CPU), memory
and connectors for input and output devices. The base of a
motherboard consists of a very firm sheet of non-conductive
material, typically some sort of rigid plastic. Thin layers of
copper or aluminum foil, referred to as traces, are printed onto
this sheet. These traces are very narrow and form the circuits
between the various components. In addition to circuits, a
motherboard contains a number of sockets and slots to connect
the other components.
A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit
board or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in
general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It
holds and allows communication between many of the crucial
electronic components of a system, such as the central
processing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides connectors for
other peripherals. Unlike a backplane, a motherboard usually
contains significant sub-systems, such as the central processor,
the chipset's input/output and memory controllers, interface
connectors, and other components integrated for general use.
Motherboard means specifically a PCB with expansion
capabilities. As the name suggests, this board is often referred
to as the "mother" of all components attached to it, which
often include peripherals, interface cards, and daughterboards:
sound cards, video cards, network cards, host bus adapters, TV
tuner cards, IEEE 1394 cards; and a variety of other custom
components.
Similarly, the term mainboard describes a device with a single
board and no additional expansions or capability, such as
controlling boards in laser printers, television sets, washing
machines, mobile phones, and other embedded systems with
limited expansion abilities.

History
Prior to the invention of the microprocessor, the digital
computer consisted of multiple printed circuit boards in a card-
cage case with components connected by a backplane, a set of
interconnected sockets. In very old designs, copper wires were
the discrete connections between card connector pins, but
printed circuit boards soon became the standard practice. The
central processing unit (CPU), memory, and peripherals were
housed on individually printed circuit boards, which were
plugged into the backplane. The ubiquitous S-100 bus of the
1970s is an example of this type of backplane system.
Laptop and notebook computers that were
developed in the 1990s integrated the most common
peripherals. This even included motherboards with no
upgradeable components, a trend that would continue as
smaller systems were introduced after the turn of the century
(like the tablet computer and the netbook). Memory,
processors, network controllers, power source, and storage
would be integrated into some systems.
 Design
A motherboard provides the electrical connections by which
the other components of the system communicate. Unlike a
backplane, it also contains the central processing unit and hosts
other subsystems and devices.
A typical desktop computer has its microprocessor, main
memory, and other essential components connected to the
motherboard. Other components such as external storage,
controllers for video display and sound, and peripheral devices
may be attached to the motherboard as plug-in cards or via
cables; in modern microcomputers, it is increasingly common to
integrate some of these peripherals into the motherboard
itself.
An important component of a motherboard is the
microprocessor's supporting chipset, which provides the
supporting interfaces between the CPU and the various buses
and external components. This chipset determines, to an
extent, the features and capabilities of the motherboard.

Modern motherboards include:

 Modern motherboards include:
 CPU sockets (or CPU slots) in which one or more
microprocessors may be installed. In the case of CPUs in
ball grid array packages, such as the VIA Nano and the
Goldmont Plus, the CPU is directly soldered to the
motherboard.
 Memory slots into which the system's main memory is to
be installed, typically in the form of DIMM modules
containing DRAM chips can be DDR3, DDR4 or DDR5
 The chipset which forms an interface between the CPU,
main memory, and peripheral buses
 Non-volatile memory chips (usually Flash ROM in modern
motherboards) containing the system's firmware or BIOS
 The clock generator which produces the system clock
signal to synchronize the various components
 Slots for expansion cards (the interface to the system via
the buses supported by the chipset)
 Power connectors, which receive electrical power from the
computer power supply and distribute it to the CPU,
chipset, main memory, and expansion cards. As of 2007,
some graphics cards (e.g. GeForce 8 and Radeon R600)
require more power than the motherboard can provide,
and thus dedicated connectors have been introduced to
attach them directly to the power supply
  Connectors for hard disk drives, optical disc drives, or
solid-state drives, typically SATA and NVMe now.

Integrated peripherals
. With the steadily decliingintegrated circuits, it is now
possible to include support cnosts and size of  for
many peripherals on the motherboard. By combining many
functions on one PCB, the physical size and total cost of
the system may be reduced; highly integrated
motherboards are thus especially popular in small form
factor and budget computers.
 Disk controllers for SATA drives, and
historical PATA drives.
 Historical floppy-disk controller
 Integrated graphics
controller supporting 2D and 3D graphics,
with VGA, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort and TV output
 integrated sound card supporting 8-channel (7.1)
audio and S/PDIF output
 Ethernet network controller for connection to
a LAN and to receive Internet
 USB controller
 Wireless network interface controller
 Bluetooth controller
 Temperature, voltage, and fan-speed sensors that
allow software to monitor the health of computer
components.
 Bookstrapping using the Basic Input/output system
Motherboards contain a ROM (and later EPROM, EEPROM, NOR
flash) to initialize hardware devices, and loads an operating
system from the peripheral device. Microcomputers such as the
Apple II and IBM PC used ROM chips mounted in sockets on the
motherboard. At power-up, the central processor unit would
load its program counter with the address of the Boot ROM and
start executing instructions from the Boot ROM. These
instructions initialized and tested the system hardware, displays
system information on the screen, performed RAM checks, and
then loaded an operating system from a peripheral device. If
none was available, then the computer would perform tasks
from other ROM stores or display an error message, depending
on the model and design of the computer. For example, both
the Apple II and the original IBM PC had Cassette BASIC (ROM
BASIC) and would start that if no operating system could be
loaded from the floppy disk or hard disk.
Most modern motherboard designs use a BIOS, stored in an
EEPROM or NOR flash chip soldered to or socketed on the
motherboard, to boot an operating system. When the
computer is powered on, the BIOS firmware tests and
configures memory, circuitry, and peripherals. This Power-On
Self Test (POST) may include testing some of the following
things:
 Video card
 Expansion cards inserted into slots, such as conventional
PCI and PCI Express
 Historical floppy drive
 Temperatures, voltages, and fan speeds for hardware
monitoring
 CMOS memory used to store BIOS configuration
 Keyboard and Mouse
 Sound card
 Network adapter
 Optical drives: CD-ROM or DVD-ROM
 Hard disk drive and solid state drive
 Security devices, such as a fingerprint reader
 USB devices, such as a USB mass storage device
 Many motherboards now use a successor to BIOS
called UEFI. It became popular after Microsoft began
requiring it for a system to be certified to run Windows 8.
 References
WWW.Google.com
WWW.wikipedia.com