Intel Roadmaps New Chipsets

Always one to point to its success, Intel Tuesday underlined its current chipmaking milestones while highlighting its future roadmap.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based firm said it is on track to deliver a new business-class chipset, code-named “Canterwood-ES,” this fall. The unit is designed for single processor Intel Pentium 4 based server systems and will include PCI-X I/O expansion capability.

The “ES” is similar in design to the original Canterwood chipset (the Intel 875P), which was highlighted back in February and introduced in April 2003. The Canterwoods support Hyper-Threading Technology as well as dual channel DDR400 memory support, a fast 800 MHz system bus, AGP8X and internal support for Serial ATA/RAID.

On the horizon, Intel said it will introduce new chipsets in 2004 for Intel Xeon processor MP-based servers (code-named “Twin Castle”) as well as two-way Intel Xeon processor-based servers (code-named “Lindenhurst”). The chipsets are expected to be the first on the block to incorporate PCI Express and DDR2 memory technology.

PCI Express is a high-speed, general-purpose, serial point-to-point I/O interconnect for computing and communications platforms. DDR2 is the next generation memory technology with higher data rates, increased peak bandwidth and improved thermals.

Intel’s latest round of chipsets for servers and workstations debuted in early 2002. This chipset family chiefly targets the Intel Xeon processor, and began with the Intel E7500 chipset for two-way server systems.

In late 2002, Intel padded its offerings with the Intel E7205 chipset (for entry-level Intel Pentium 4-based workstations) and the Intel E7505 (for Intel Xeon-based workstations). About that same time, the Intel E7501 chipset was also introduced, for Intel Xeon processor-based servers with a 533 MHz system bus.

Intel also makes its E8870 chipset for Intel Itanium -based servers, which are designed mostly for dual and multiprocessor server systems.

Now, the No. 1 chipmaker says it has sold one million of its family of chipsets for servers and workstations.