motherboard
A motherboard is the central or primary circuit board making up a complex electronic system, such as a modern computer. It is also known as a mainboard, baseboard, system board, or, on Apple computers, a logic board, and is sometimes abbreviated as mobo. more...
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The basic purpose of the motherboard, like a backplane, is to provide the electrical and logical connections by which the other components of the system communicate.
A typical desktop computer is built with the microprocessor, main memory, and other essential components on the motherboard. Other components such as external storage, controllers for video display and sound, and peripheral devices are typically attached to the motherboard via edge connectors and cables, although in modern computers it is increasingly common to integrate these \"peripherals\" into the motherboard.
Components and functions
The motherboard of a typical desktop consists of a large PCB. It holds electronic components and interconnects, as well as physical connectors (sockets, slots, and headers) into which other computer components may be inserted or attached.
Most motherboards include, at a minimum:
sockets in which one or more CPUs are installed;
slots into which the system's main memory is installed (typically in the form of DIMM modules containing DRAM chips);
a chipset which forms an interface between the CPU's front-side bus, main memory, and peripheral buses;
non-volatile memory chips (usually Flash ROM in modern motherboards) containing the system's firmware or BIOS;
a clock generator which produces the system clock signal to synchronize the various components;
slots for expansion cards (these interface to the system via the buses supported by the chipset);
power connectors and circuits, which receive electrical power from the computer power supply and distribute it to the CPU, chipset, main memory, and expansion cards.;
Additionally, nearly all motherboards include logic and connectors to support commonly-used input devices, such as PS/2 connectors for a mouse and keyboard. Early personal computers such as the Apple II or IBM PC included only this minimal peripheral support on the motherboard. Additional peripherals such as disk controllers and serial ports were provided as expansion cards.
Given the high thermal design power of high-speed computer CPUs and components, modern motherboards nearly always include heatsinks and mounting points for fans to dissipate excess heat.
Integrated peripherals
With the steadily declining costs and size of integrated circuits, it is now possible to include support 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.
Read more at Wikipedia.org
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![The Octek Jaguar V motherboard from 1993[1]. This board has 6 ISA slots but few onboard peripherals, as evidenced by the lack of external connectors.](pics/Motherboard_3.jpg "The Octek Jaguar V motherboard from 1993[1]. This board has 6 ISA slots but few onboard peripherals, as evidenced by the lack of external connectors.")
