VIA VT8237A Southbridge will support 192K 32Bit HDAudio and two SATA II features

VIA server chipset roadmap for 2005 disclosed, meet K8T935 (Tahoe)

iQue 3600a: PDA + GPS for civil aviation

VIA VT8237A Southbridge will support 192K 32Bit HDAudio and two SATA II features

According to our source, a new modification of VIA VT8237 Southbridge — VT8237A will support HDAudio (192K/32Bit), which will come in handy for playing games and watching movies (naturally).

Another interesting fact is that the new Southbridge won´t support SATA II, but will offer two features that have more relation to it than to the older SATA standard. These are Port Multiplier and Defer Spin Up. The former, according to the official specifications, is a "mechanism for one active host connection to communicate with multiple devices. A Port Multiplier can be thought of as a simple multiplexer where one active host connection is multiplexed to multiple device connections. Only one active host connection to the Port Multiplier is supported. The Port Multiplier is an extensible design that supports up to 15 device connections and utilizes the full bandwidth of the host connection."

As for Defer Spin Up (or Staggered Spin-up), according to another part of the official specs, "storage subsystems that include numerous Serial ATA hard disk drives are presented with power system design issues related to the current load presented during system power-up." So, Defer Spin Up is a "mechanism by which the storage subsystem controller(s) can sequence disk drive initialization and spin up." In other words, it´s used to properly accomodate power in certain situations like system launch.

VIA VT8237A Southbridge is expexted in volume production in Q2´2005 as well as the K8T935 chipset.

Traditionally, here´s the roadmap itself for your information:

Source: HKEPC

VIA server chipset roadmap for 2005 disclosed, meet K8T935 (Tahoe)

Our colleagues from HKEPC obtained VIA´s server chipset roadmap for 2005, in which you can see some details on the single-chip K8T935 (Tahoe) platform designed for AMD Athlon 64 / Athlon64 FX / Opteron systems. In particular, the platform offers PCI-X 64-bit 66/100/133MHz interface, supports 6 x SATA II channels (and RAID 0, 1, 0+1, JBOD).

Moreover, K8T935 is expected to support 18 SerDes (serializer/deserializer) interfaces, 4 PCI-Express ports to provide 4 such configurations. This resembles nForce 4 SLI support, but no more details were disclosed.

According to the roadmap, the volume production of K8T935 is scheduled to Q2´2005.

For more information, here´s a roadmap itself (click to enlarge):

Source: HKEPC

iQue 3600a: PDA + GPS for civil aviation

The PDA + GPS combines are becoming more and more usual as car navigation systems. But Garmin International decided to export this experience into another segment, namely civil aviation. To do this the company introduced iQue 3600a, a fully-fledged PDA based on Palm OS combined with aviation navigation system (also suitable for cars, according to the press release).

The most interesting part of the device is an intellectual cradle that contains databases of landscape types and features and warns pilots about nearby obstacles. As the GPS receiver is built into PDA, a pilot will never get lost even outside its plane (given he doesn´t forget to replace batteries :).

iQue 3600a applications:

• QueMap — maps of North and South America (by default) with airport locations
• QueTerrain — topographical database, obstacle warnings
• QueNav — monitors flight speed, altitude and direction
• QueFlights — stores information on flight length, distance, start and end time

Naturally, iQue 3600a offers all applications related to Palm OS: Address, Date Book, Memo Pad, To Do (Microsoft Outlook synchronisation), Calculator and Palm Reader.

iQue 3600a specs:

• 200 MHz DragonBall MXL ARM9 processor
• 64 MB SDRAM, 32 MB flash
• 320x480 65,536-color TFT LCD
• Voice recorder and MP3 player
• Secure Digital slot
• Palm OS Garnet
• 70x127x20 mm

The device is to be available for sale this month with MSRP in North America up to $1,100.

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