The southbridge is one of the two chips in the core logic chipset on a personal computer (PC) motherboard, the other being the northbridge. The southbridge typically implements the slower capabilities of the motherboard in a northbridge/southbridge chipset computer architecture. In systems with Intel chipsets, the southbridge is named I/O Controller Hub (ICH), while AMD has named its southbridge Fusion Controller Hub (FCH) since the introduction of its Fusion APUs.
It manages the basic forms of input/output ( I/O ) such as Universal Serial Bus ( USB ), serial , audio, Integrated Drive Electronics ( IDE ), and Industry Standard Architecture ( ISA ) I/O in a computer.
