Intel gained nothing. Now some Chipsets for AMD Hammer: Details
Posted 11/13/01 at 8:31 am by Rat
Besides AMD, there are three other Taiwanese chipset makers, which have already expressed their desire to introduce solutions for the upcoming Hammer CPUs. They are ALi, SiS and VIA. There is nothing to be surprised at, actually. According to the most recent AMD’s roadmap, Hammer family should start replacing Athlon processors in all market segments in the end of next year already. That is why it’s high time we took a closer look at the companies’ plans concerning the new chipsets for the AMD newcomers with the help of this info:
Manufacturer AMD VIA ALi SiS
Codename Golem Lokar K8HTB M1687 M1688 SiS755 SiS760
Integrated Graphics Core - - - - + - +
Memory - - - - DDR SDRAM - DDR SDRAM
AGP - AGP 8x AGP 8x AGP 8x AGP 8x AGP 8x AGP 8x
PCI-X 2 segments - - - - - -
South Bridge ? ? ? M1563 M1563 SiS962 SiS962
Bus to South Bridge Hyper Transport Hyper Transport Hyper Transport Hyper Transport Hyper Transport MuTIOL MuTIOL
Sampling Schedule ? ? Q2'02 H2'02 ? Q2'02 Q4'02
Mass Production Schedule Q4'02 Q3'02 ? ? ? Q4'02 Q1'03
Now we would like to draw a few conclusions of ours:
All the manufacturers are going to offer chipsets for desktop ClawHammer processors so far. Server SledgeHammer CPUs will work only on mainboards built on AMD’s own Golem chipset, which reminds us of the situation with Athlon MP. Note that Golem is the only Hammer chipset supporting PCI-X bus.
We would like to note that the manufacturers will do their best to assign the launching of all chipsets (except the integrated ones) to the announcement of the new ClawHammer CPU, which is due in Q3 2002. The integrated chipsets for this CPU should come out a bit later, in 2003.
Since ClawHammer will have its own integrated memory controller supporting DDR333, most chipsets will have no additional memory controller. The only exception here is the integrated core logic sets, as their exclusive memory controllers will be destined to serve the needs of the built-in graphics core.
Moreover, we would like to stress that VIA changed the name of its Hammer chipset in the latest roadmap revision. It is no longer called K8T333, but K8HTB. "HTB" stands for "Hyper Transport Bridge". It can be probably explained by the fact that K8HTB will have no memory controller of its own.
The South Bridges of all chipsets for ClawHammer processors (except AMD ones, maybe) will support USB 2.0, ATA/133 and IEEE 1394.
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