Which are two activites are normally controlled by the northbridge part of the chip set?

In order to understand the Nortbridge you have to understand part of it used to be be the Memory Controller Chip (MCC) used to retrieve memory from RAM for the CPU. The MCC was upgraded to not only provide an interconnection between the CPU and RAM but also to be the interconnection between the CPU and other devices on the PC and was renamed the Northbridge. The Northbridge only deals with high-speed interfaces such as the connection to your video and RAM. The Southbridge works mainly with lower-speed devices such as the USB controller and the hard drive controllers. The Northbridge and the Southbridge architecture is called a ChipSet..