Re: Which chipset did Intel allegedly copy?
Just a month before Intel introduced the 440LX AGPset, the boys at Micron cooked up their first motherboard chipset silicon, which they call the Samurai, available only on Micron's award-winning Powerdigm XSU workstation. This chipset boasts a 64-bit 66 MHz PCI bus, which fully supports the PCI 2.1 spec. This alone is responsible for the chipset's dominance in pumping data through the controllers. Many high-end video cards and SCSI-3 RAID controllers support 66 MHz, and some support 64-bit operation. Word on the street is that Micron had help from VIA for their Southbridge controller. I also heard that Micronics makes (at least some of) their motherboards...
davesworld.click2site.com
Micron’s desktop systems are called Millenia, and for the last several years they have been at or near the top in every product comparison.. In fact, a Millenia XKU 300 just received PC Magazine’s Editor’s choice award, beating similar systems from AST, Dell, Gateway and NEC. The Powerdigm Workstation line also won Editors choice in this comparison against systems from IBM and Dell. Both systems use a 300 MHz Intel Pentium II, with the Powerdigm employing a Micron-designed 64 bit, 66MHz PCI bus.
wgss.com
I guess it was a PII chipset, not a Pentium chipset - sorry. I do remember sourcing dual processor machines and finding the only ones on the market were from Micron and that they used Micron chipsets. It was a long time ago.
Note that the Micron systems were on the market before Intel released its chipset. There were various stories about Intel coercing Micron out of the market. This was when Intel could say jump and computer manufacturers replied "how high?"
The fact of the matter was that Micron's chipset noticeably underperformed Intel's later released chipset on non i/o bound operations (Micron's chipset had a 64bit 66MHZ PCI bus - with the right Adaptec disk controller, a full chain of fast drives, and multiple network cards, it was faster than anything else in its class for disk and server operations)
If Intel hadn't stomped on this technologically innovative chipset, we'd probably have many 64 bit PCI cards available today and we'd be getting better overall performance from our machines.
Aren't you relieved that Intel's stomping days are over and better technology (like DDR, chipset cache, 64 bit PCI, etc.) can't be withheld from the market by Intel anymore?
Dan |
