What's the difference between KBC and SIO?

[dan1200rr]

Hello,

on laptop motherboard we can find KBC (keyboard controller) and his replacement called SIO (most on Dell motherboards).
Whats are the difference between them.

Best regards

[piernov]

Re: What's the difference between KBC and SIO?

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...19&postcount=5

Just to make things clear, what people call "startup chip", "multicontroller", "Keyboard Controller"/"KBC", "Super I/O"/"SIO", "Embedded Controller"/"EC" is essentially the same thing on modern PC.
I prefer calling it the "EC" (or Embedded Controller) when talking about a laptop, because it does a lot of various things and it is programmable. On a laptop, it'll be the ITE ITxxxx, ENE KBCxxxx, SMSC MECxxxx chip. The SMC on Macbooks has a similar role, although it doesn't have a keyboard controller in it. It's a microcontroller that has its own firmware and executes it as soon as it receives power (and its reset signal is deasserted), independent from the CPU.
On desktops (mostly low/mid range boards), it does less things and is usually not programmable, Winbond or ITE IT871x/872x chips are common. On older board it also had a floppy disk controller in it.

[dan1200rr]

Re: What's the difference between KBC and SIO?

According to this, the main difference is just lack of keyboard controller in SIO.
Any major difference more?