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submitted 6 months ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 months ago

laptops all have pretty much an x86 soc. separation between cpu and chipset nowadays happens only on desktops for some reason.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago

The reason is flexibility, the board manufacturer can decide how many PCIe lanes to send where, how many USB ports there's going to be etc. Modern mainboards are a power delivery system and IO backplane.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 months ago

this makes sense but can't it be done with integrated chipsets too?

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago

Yeah but then you can't switch out the chipset without having a different CPU skew and probably also socket because changing IO without changing up pins doesn't sound like a good idea. People would barely notice the additional sockets with Intel but we don't want to take Intel as a benchmark there, do we.

[-] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

I haven’t looked that closely at laptop CPUs

My guess would be partially because there are fewer possible interfaces, and they’re directly connecting the CPU to a separate Ethernet/WiFi MAC, USB hub controller, and audio DSP rather than having a separate chipset arbitrating who’s talking to the CPU and doing some of those functions?

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 months ago

my understanding, from the block diagrams they release, is that these io functions are simply integrated into the cpu. in a way that could probably be implemented in desktops too.

[-] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

I can’t say for all of them, I just knew that e.g. the z790 chipset still ran the ethernet phy, audio dsp, SPI, their version of TrustZone, etc through the chipset

https://www.funkykit.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/intel-z790-chipset-diagram.jpg

If you have the block diagrams for the laptop ones, I’d be curious

this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
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