8/11/00 - Intel's Secret Chipset: Brookdale
Aug 11, 2000 (Tech Web - CMP via COMTEX) -- The name of the secret chipset for Intel's Pentium 4 is Brookdale,
Intel Corp. documents and an analyst have revealed.
Bert McComas, an analyst at InQuest Market Research in Gilbert, Ariz., this week disclosed several highlights of
Intel's forthcoming microprocessor and chipset roadmap through late next year. In addition to posting an analysis on
his own web site at inqst.com, he also provided the roadmap to TechWeb News.
A spokeswoman for Intel (stock: INTC) in Santa Clara, Calif., citing corporate policy, declined to comment on
unannounced products.
Intel's July roadmap update attempts to make clear a number of chipset revisions, while appearing to isolate the
controversial Rambus Inc. (stock: RMBS) architecture firmly in the highest-priced echelon of desktop PCs.
For example, Intel now believes that the vast majority of PCs selling for under $2,000 -- roughly about three-quarters
or more of the market -- will use a cheaper synchronous memory of some sort, whether it be single- or a
higher-performance, double-data rate DRAM, according to a diagram Intel provided to its customers as part of the
roadmap.
While Intel has publicly stated that it is "evaluating" double-data-rate DRAM (DDR DRAM), many of the forthcoming
chipsets from rival Via Technologies and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (stock: AMD), for example, will use DDR,
executives have said.
At the Intel Developer Forum this spring, executives gave the impression that the Direct Rambus memory would be
used exclusively in Pentium 4 chipsets.
For example, the Intel 850 or "Tehama" chipset includes two channels that connect to Direct Rambus memory, as
does a new successor, the Tehama-E, scheduled to be released in the third quarter of 2001.
The licensing agreement between Rambus, Mountain View, Calif., and Intel also places additional constraints on
Intel. According to a legal quirk in the agreement, Rambus will actually pay royalties to Intel if Intel ships at least 20
percent of its total chipsets with a Direct Rambus interface.
Other inustry-wide goals must also be met. But based upon statements from chip-maker Samsung that indicated
the firm could meet those goals, Avo Kanadjian, Rambus' vice-president of sales and marketing, said the only
obstacle to royalties was Intel's own commitments.
According to its roadmap, Intel will provide OEMs an update on its DDR position early in the fourth quarter.
"Where I would say DDR [the roadmap] says SDRAM," McComas said. "AMD's going to be shipping DDR for eight
months by that time. It's not going to be competitive in the marketplace."
Intel's roadmaps have tended to be a good but not definite indication of its plans. While Intel's roadmaps usually
provide OEMs with information for product planning as far as a year ahead, sudden product introductions -- or
eliminations -- can throw a wrench in OEM plans.
Brookdale, for example, was little more than a rumor up until about a month ago, when Intel said that the chipset
would be added to the roadmap to support PC133 memory for the Pentium 4 platform.
Intel has also eliminated the Tulloch chipset from its product plans, which many thought would contain the
synchronous memory support the Brookdale contains.
An additional SDRAM-based chipset, Almador, is scheduled for introduction around the second quarter of 2001,
most likely for low-end, Celeron-class processors. OEM sources said they expect the chipset in May.
The Brookdale chipset will sample early in the second quarter of 2001, with production slated for late in the third
quarter, the roadmap says. Additional features include a single channel to PC133 synchronous memory, AGP 4X,
and a new I/O Hub, the ICH-3.
The ICH-3 will transfer information at 266 Mbytes/s, including support for two ATA-100 disk drives, and six of the new
USB 2.0 ports. Brookdale's features will be formally defined at the end of the month, the documents say.
In the second quarter of 2002, OEMs said last month, the ICH-4 will be introduced with support for the Serial ATA
storage protocol.
The roadmap confirms reports and OEM sources who have previously said that the next-generation Pentium 4
microprocessor, which will be introduced this fall at speeds up to 1.4-GHz, will be replaced by a chip dubbed
Northwood in the third quarter of 2001.
The roadmap indicates that Northwood is a 0.13-micron shrink of the Pentium 4, available in a new 478-pin socket.
OEM sources added that Intel would like the chip to run initially at 2 GHz, and is initially scheduled to ship in
October 2001.
Before the introduction of Northwood, the Pentium 4 package will also be redesigned to use 478, rather than 423
pins. This will allow OEMs using the Tehama-E and Brookdale chipsets to "drop in" the new Northwood
microprocessors, as a replacement for the Pentium 4.
The roadmap does not directly address reports that say a forthcoming Celeron version of the current Pentium III,
Tualatin, will be designed to connect to the Almador chipset via a 200-MHz front-side bus. One OEM source
believes that Tualatin will be released around June 2001, at about 1.26 GHz.
Finally, Intel's roadmap indicates that a next-generation mainstream chipset using Direct RDRAM, and a second
chipset using SDRAM, will be introduced in mid-2002.
techweb.com
Copyright (C) 2000 CMP Media Inc.
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