northbridge; host bridge; memory controller hub
Computing term for the chip that connects the CPU to high-speed components like RAM and the graphics card. Technical; used in hardware contexts.
The northbridge manages data transfer between the CPU and memory.
On recent motherboards, the northbridge functions are integrated into the CPU.
Variant with interpunct; less common but still seen.
Borrowed from English 'northbridge', referring to its typical position on a motherboard chipset diagram.