What does interface and peripheral functions mean?

Question

I know that interface means a point where any two things meet and interact, but I can't seem to wrap my head around the term when they use it in computers.

A chipset performs interface and peripheral functions for the processor. What does it mean?

What do you mean when you say the chipsets are the circuitry that provides interfaces for memory, expansion cards, and onboard peripherals?

The same goes for peripheral functions. I know peripheral devices are external devices used to connect to the CPU, but what is the function? Is it that the chips are responsible to transfer data from the peripheral devices via the bus to the processor?

Answer 1

I think you have the general idea right. I would add that

• Interfaces are more like APIs and cross-boundary objects that help interactions between two different worlds. So you can imagine a bus is an interface between the CPU and its peripherals, such as hard drives, GPUs, memory, etc. A chipset provides an interface between the CPU and these peripherals in a few ways. One way is that there is an instruction set for the CPU, so there is a very defined way of how devices can interact with the CPU. E.g. turn this bit on to tell the CPU something, or send a string of instructions tell the CPU something. The two worlds here are outside (general) and inside (CPU land).
• Peripherals are the external devices, and there are many of them. From a lower level perspective, you can talk about caches, like L1, L2 and how they interact with the processor, but if we consider those fast caches as part of the processor, then we can say the processor interacts with memory to store information, or the processor sends back results of instructions to the user, or the processor tells the GPU to display something to the monitor.
• At a higher level, if you consider your computer as a peripheral, then the mouse would be a peripheral that takes user hand input, a CD drive would be a peripheral that takes in disk data, and a microphone would take in voice input, and so on.

Answer 2

The CPU in a computer is a very general purpose device. The same CPU might be used in a gaming PC, or in a server, or in a spacecraft. So, when they design CPUs, they don't design them for a specific function; you won't find a CPU with a special electrical connection for connecting to the inertial guidance system of a spacecraft, or connections for a hard drive, or a mouse.

What the CPU has instead is a bus.

The bus (short for Omnibus, meaning "for all"), is a set of electrical data connections on the CPU which can be used to talk to other chips, which in turn talk to the peripherals of the computer (the mouse, the hard drive, the graphics card, etc.).

This set of other chips (the chipset) are the interface between the CPU and the peripherals. Arranging a computer this way means that different types of computers can be built for whatever function you require. A server, for example might have several chips on the bus for talking to hard drives, but no chips for handling graphics. A Home PC would have one chip for talking to a couple of hard drives, one chip for handling graphics, and another for USB, allowing things like mice to be connected.