Hi all; ViaHardware reports on how VIA wil make a P4 DDR chipset with or without Intel's okay:
VIA Apollo PX266 Preview
Odie, ViaHardware, Feb 21, 2001
Introduction
Acer Labs Inc last week announced its procurement of an Intel NetBurst bus license, becoming the first Taiwanese manufacturer to secure such a license. Or are they?
Let me direct you to a 1999 agreement between Intel and S3, which changed the course of the chipset industry and gave S3 the rights to every Intel processor bus for a full 10 years.
In 1999, S3 stumbled upon a fire sale put on by Exponential. In a blind auction, S3 secured a patent for $10 million. Through either cunning or luck, this particular patent was critical to Intel’s upcoming Pentium 4 processor. Realizing this, S3 knew it could get virtually any concession it wanted from the microprocessor giant, since it could block shipment of the P4 if Intel did not comply. Eventually, S3 secured a license to every x86 related patent, only excluding processors themselves. Thus, S3 gained access to the P5, P6, P7 and future Intel busses until the license expired in 10 years. By virtue of VIA’s half-stake in S3 Graphics, VIA adopts this license as its own.
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Memory Support
The PX266's memory controller will be based on the Pro266 and KT266's. Thus, we won't be seeing any exotic dual-channel DDR-SDRAM setups on motherboards based on PX266. A dual-channel SDRAM interface is simply not feasible for the mainstream computer market, as the 128 data lines, plus their associated control lines, would make the motherboard's PCB overly complex and expensive to design. However, we will be seeing a dual-channel DDR-SDRAM design implemented into the server version of PX266.
PC100/133 and PC1600/PC2100 will be supported, but anything less then PC2100 will greatly hamstring the memory bandwidth hungry Pentium 4.
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The Future
VIA plans to follow up PX266 with a chipset codenamed "Pro2002". This chipset will support the DDR333 technology that VIA is pushing as a stop-gap between PC2100 and DDR-II. Also, Intel's Infiniband technology will be supported, along with 64Bit PCI and PCI-X. As it targets the high-end market, Pro2002 will support Foster and its future iteration, Prestonia. Also, McKinley support is under consideration.
The Competition
VIA's competitors, however, will not be idle. Intel has moved up their release dates for both Brookdale SDR and DDR, and SiS and ALi are busy developing their own chipsets. Intel will be modifying their i850 chipset as well, adding support for the Northwood. Called the i850e, it will continue to support only dual-channel RDRAM.
Maker + VIA Intel Intel ALi SiS
Chipset + PX266 Brookdale i850e M1661 645
CPUs + Willamette, Willamette, Willamette, Willamette, Willamette
| Northwood Northwood Northwood Northwood Northwood
| SMP SMP
Max CPUs + 2 1 2 1 1
Socket + 423,478 478 478 423,478 423,478
RAM + SDRAM SDRAM RDRAM SDRAM SDRAM
| PC2100 PC133 PC600 PC2100 PC2100
| PC133 PC2100 1Q02 PC800
Launch + 3Q01 3Q01 4Q01 4Q01 4Q01
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viahardware.com
-- Carl
P.S. Thanks to xbitlabs.com for the link. |
