According to HowStuffWorks.com, they're connected by the data bus and address bus. But the website also says that the northbridge is what connects the CPU to RAM, and the front side bus connects the CPU to the northbridge. So where does the data bus come into this?
How is a CPU connected to RAM?
Guest
Anything that mentions Northbridge is out of date. The Chipset of Northbridge and Southbridge which are Intel terms were merged into a single core logic a long time ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...mputing%29
But, here is an old but detailed overview of how a pc works
http://www.karbosguide.com/books/pcarchitecture/start.htm
and the explanation of RAM to CPU
http://www.coreaudiotechnology.com/computer-audio-the-ram-and-cpu-relationship/
I was a Procurement Engineer at IBM and Lenovo, and for some time a Component Engineer, but my detailed Component Engineering work involved capacitors and motherboards and single gate devices up to the TTL and Linear ICs, but I left the details of the designs to the designers and the microcomponents to those Engineers. I learned about the overall functions but never paid attention to the details of how the signals moved between the parts.
The CPU includes a memory controller that at one point was in Northbridge so the data you read could be out of date. Just as at points in time, the graphics was moved from separate IC, to the core logic, and then to the CPU, and in AMD they co-packaged it with the CPU in the A series.
The cardbus is what connects it all when IC's are not directly feeding from one to the other.
If you are an electrical engineer, or learning to be one, you can have all kinds of fun looking into cpus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...m_arch.svg
http://www.slideshare.net/jabaktash/final-draft-intel-core-i5-processors-architecture
Personally, I never had to keep up with what functions they were putting into each microcontroller nor how the architecture worked.
You may get a clearer explanation from someone who actually is an Electrical engineer, as opposed to me who did electrical engineering related things without actually being one, but I blew their mind on material science and reliability, so call it even.
The functions were moved around among the ICs a few times, so if you are trying to get details, use materials of the past 3 years or so only. The answer you seek may be within the links.
Andy L