High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The memory controller is a digital circuit which manages the flow of data going to and from the main memory. It can be a separate chip or integrated into another chip, such as on the die of a microprocessor. Computers using Intel microprocessors have traditionally had a memory controller implemented on their motherboard's northbridge, but some modern microprocessors, such as DEC/Compaq's Alpha 21364, AMD's Athlon 64 and Opteron processors, IBM's POWER5, Sun Microsystems UltraSPARC T1 and more recently, Intel Core i7 have a memory controller on the microprocessor die to reduce the memory latency. While this has the potential to increase the system's performance, it locks the microprocessor to a specific type of memory, forcing a redesign in order to support newer memory technologies. When DDR2 SDRAM was introduced, AMD released new Athlon 64 CPUs. These new models, with a DDR2 controller, use a different physical socket, so that they will only fit in motherboards designed for the new type of RAM. When the memory controller is not on-die, the same CPU may be installed on a new motherboard, with an updated northbridge.

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