SiS741 — new chipset for AMD Athlon XP platform

848P Neo series — MSI´s i848P-based boards

Seagate plans to roll out 2.5" HDD with Serial Attached SCSI

Time to dig in Soltek´s videocard plans

Easy BIOS updates for ABIT mobos — starting Såptember

AMD launched AMD64 Logo Program

Three new members to VSIA

SiS741 — new chipset for AMD Athlon XP platform

Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. (SiS) today announces the latest integrated chipset supporting the 400MHz Front Side Bus on AMD Athlon XP platform — SiS741. Motherboard makers have been starting on the testing and related design with the SiS741 engineering sample. Mass production of motherboards adopting the SiS741 chipset will commence in September 2003.

SiS964 will be coupled with SiS741 as the South Bridge Chipset, which integrated with Serial ATA high-speed transfer interface. The brand-new South Bridge Chipset SiS964 not only supports Dual-Channel parallel ATA, but also adds two independent Serial ATA150 connection ports, which offer storage devices with data transmission speed up to 150MB/sec. Other special features include 8 built-in USB2.0 ports, which meet the requirement for increasing peripheral device connections, full 5.1 channel surround sound, V.90 modem and Ethernet network. The SiS964 also supports Multiple RAID disk array modes, including RAID0, RAID1, and JBOD

848P Neo series — MSI´s i848P-based boards

MSI today announced 848P Neo as the mainstream FSB800 platform for Intel Pentium 4 and upcoming processors. The series of i848P-based boards consists of basic model, 848P Neo-S and enhanced (due to onboard LAN controller) 848P Neo-LS.

Boards as it told are intended for Pentium 4 (3.2 GHz and higher)/Celeron processors. As it is known, i848P is a ´cut´ version of 865P — differences are in lower throughoutput of memory bus (single-channel chipset) and higher perfomance of FSB. According to developers, the boards support DDR266/333/400/433/450/466/500 (via overclocking) SDRAM, 400/533/800 (up to 1,4 GHz — via overclocking) FSB.

As for the other specifications of the mobos, they´re rather usual — one AGP slot supports 8x/4x at 0.8V (AGP 3.0) or 4x at 1.5V (3.3V not supported), five 32-bit v2.3 Master PCI bus slots (support 3.3v/5v PCI bus interface), Serial ATA/150 support, AC´97 link controller integrated in ICH5, optional onboard network controller — Realtek 8100C, up to 8 USB 2.0 ports (Rear * 4/ Front * 4).

Here´s the chipset:

• 800/533/400 MHz System Bus
• Hyper-Threading Technology Support
• Hub Architecture
• DDR 400/333/266 SDRAM
• AGP8X Interface
• Integrated Hi-Speed USB 2.0
• Dual Independent Serial ATA Controllers
• North bridge — 82848P Memory Controller Hub — 932 Flip Chip Ball Grid Array (FCBGA)
• South bridge — 82801EB (ICH5)/82801ER (ICH5R) — 460 Micro Ball Grid Array (BGA)

Seagate plans to roll out 2.5" HDD with Serial Attached SCSI

Seagate Technology is planning to introduce this week 2.5" HDD with Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), aimed at the corporate market. As they say at CNET, the disk will be demonstrated at HP World Conference and Expo in Atlanta. Hard-drive maker said it plans to make the SAS drive available to customers next year.

Seagate´s forthcoming 2.5-inch enterprise drive is notable for its small overall size. For years, drives for desktops and servers have been 4 inches wide. Seagate said its new drive is about 70 percent smaller than the conventional drive size. Drives in desktops typically hold platters that are 3.5 inches in diameter, but the platters in high-performing drives for servers are smaller. Drives that run at 10,000 revolutions per minute (rpm) hold platters 3 inches in diameter, while those spinning at 15,000rpm hold platters 2.5 inches in diameter.

Another benefit of the disk is interface — while a typical storage array with parallel SCSI may have 14 drives, an array with SAS could combine between 24 and 30 drives in one box.

Time to dig in Soltek´s videocard plans

Yesterday we told about Soltek mobos plans. Now it´s time for videocards.

As we see, by the end of the year 4 positions will be discontinued (reach EOL, End Of Life).

Easy BIOS updates for ABIT mobos — starting Såptember

A Taiwanese mobo maker, ABIT, has been working at Web BIOS update for over two years and, finally, is going to offer the service – starting September. As it took indeed much time to examine all the bottlenecks of the feature, we can say the service is rather mature.

One of the problems ABIT has resolved – according to The Inquirer staff – is so to say channel stability. They at company were worried about the connection breaking while you users updating a BIOS. Which wouldn´t have been at all funny. Now this problem is resolved, so, lucky you, owners of ´floppyless´ systems on ABIT mobos – you get the chance to get up-to-date BIOS without headache.

AMD launched AMD64 Logo Program

AMD today launched the AMD64 Logo Program to help consumers and IT decision makers identify hardware and software products ready for AMD64, a new class of computing technology that can run current and next-generation software on the same processor at the same time.

The AMD Opteron processor, for servers and workstations, and the upcoming AMD Athlon 64 processor, for desktop and mobile PCs, are the first AMD64 processors. By maintaining compatibility with today’s 32-bit solutions, AMD designed these processors to enable a seamless transition to pervasive 64-bit computing. For the first time, hardware and software developers can create a unified 32- and 64-bit computing infrastructure compatible with the x86 architecture.

Three new members to VSIA

Gaining new support from the semiconductor industry, the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA) has added three new companies to its board of directors — Agere Systems, ST Microelectronics, and TSMC. The ten-member VSIA board also includes Alcatel, Cadence Design Systems, Infineon Technologies, Mentor Graphics, Motorola, Sonics, and IBM.

The VSIA is developing standards and specifications for the integration of silicon intellectual property (IP) from multiple sources. The organization has more than 100 member companies, including systems houses, semiconductor vendors, EDA vendors, and IP providers. New members within the past six months include Agere, UMC, GDA Technologies, and Dolphin Technology.

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