Hitachi demonstrates the first Montecito chipset with 667MHz FSB at IDF Spring 2005

IDF Spring 2005, Day 1: Intel showcases mobile PC concepts

AMD showcases dual-core Athlon 64 processors

MTVGA X800XL and 9600XT SE: Canopus stands out

NVIDIA sheds light on its nForce4 SLI chipset

Hitachi demonstrates the first Montecito chipset with 667MHz FSB at IDF Spring 2005

At IDF Spring 2005 Hitachi demonstrated the industry-first 667MHz FSB Montecito chipset for Itanium processors and a sample system named BladeSymphony. The novelty was developed in close cooperation with Intel, so it also supports the Intel Virtualization Technology.

According to the company, the increased FSB clock rate boosts SPECCPU2000 results by up to 15% and the results of streaming from memory by up to 40% comparing to 400 MHz FSB.

The Intel Virtualization Technology is supported by Hitachi in its mainframe virtualization systems. It enables to create numerous logical servers (partitions) on a single hardware platform without any specialized software.

The new chipset and solutions on it are positioned for large enterprises, scientific developments and large databases.

Source: Hitachi

IDF Spring 2005, Day 1: Intel showcases mobile PC concepts

At the first day of IDF Spring 2005 Intel paid much attention to the new mobile solutions.

Let´s start with a mobile PC "on-the-go". Sized as a pocket DVD player, this ultra portable is to play all multimedia content in your Digital Home and in a certain radius around it.

It´s interesting that concept´s touchscreen also acts as a speaker. The PC on-the-go features GPS (so you don´t get lost while wandering around watching DVDs), digital camera and a WLAN adapter.

Speaking of office machines, according to Intel, such a concept must be of maximum functionality, provide data privacy and manageability. The concept supports Intel Virtualization Technology (Vanderpool) that enables several OS to work on a single machine. Additional features include console, biosensor, camera, mic, 802.11a/b/g and Bluetooth adapters.

Besides, as an answer to AMD and its dual-core novelties, the company showcased a notebook based on Yonah, a dual-core mobile CPU, that was playing MP3s and processing video simultaneously with benchmark execution.

Finally, the new mobile office concept enables Windows Mobile cell phones to find and synchronize with it automatically.

AMD showcases dual-core Athlon 64 processors

AMD held a press conference in the first IDF day. This time — to announce dual-core Athlon 64 solutions. (Actually the company published the corresponding press release about dual-core Athlon 64 processors as far back as the last week). A simple flowchart of the novelty doesn´t differ from that of a dual-core Opteron:

Besides the SRI (System Request Interface) that handles data and instruction for two cores interconnected with memory and HyperTransport interface, there´s APIC (not shown) that synchronizes and adjusts signal levels of both cores.

A pilot sample of dual-core Athlon 64 is made using 90nm process in the Socket 939 package. The company claims that a simple BIOS upgrade will be enough to install such a novelty into older Socket 939 boards.

The new dual-core Athlon 64 solutions are to be shipping in H2 2005, however there are still some issues regarding the software. In particular, Pacifica technology called to provide compatibility with single-core CPU software is still in development and the deadline is not known yet.

Source: PC Watch

MTVGA X800XL and 9600XT SE: Canopus stands out

As expected, there are still more announcements based on ATI new X800XL and X850 AGP GPUs. But contrary to the trend, Canopus introduced its X800XL-based MTVGA X800XL for PCI Express x16 along with MTVGA 9600XT SE AGP card.

MTVGA X800XL features 400MHz GPU, 256MB of 256-bit GDDR3 operating at 980MHz. These cards also have fans with adjustable speed or passive cooling systems.

MTVGA 9600XT SE bases on 500MHz RADEON 9600 XT GPU and has 128MB of 128-bit DDR operating at 500MHz as well.

Both novelties feature VGA (D-Sub), DVI-I and TV connectors.

Source: PC Watch

NVIDIA sheds light on its nForce4 SLI chipset

At IDF Spring 2005 Californian NVIDIA finally shed some light on its first Intel chipset.

"NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel edition" — this is how the new generation of SLI core logic designed for Intel processors will be called. The solution traditionally has South and North bridges:

Crush19

Crush19 Northbridge:

• Supports Pentium 4 (800/1066 MHz)
• Dual-channel DDR2-533/667 memory controller
• 16 PCI-E channels: 2 x PCI Express x8 or 1 x PCI Express x16
• 800MHz HyperTransport link

MCP04

MCP04 Southbridge:

• 3 x PCI Express x1
• 10 x USB 2.0
• 7.1ch sound
• Gigabit Ethernet
• ActiveArmor hardware firewall
• 2 x Ultra ATA-133
• 4 x Serial ATA-II, RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, JBOD for two interfaces
• 800 MHz HyperTransport link

Crush19 and MCP04 are interconnected via the 800MHz HyperTransport, which is also new for Intel-based systems. NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel edition will also be capable of working with dual-core Smithfield processors made using 90nm process (Pentium D 8x0).

At IDF they showcased the presale motherboard samples:

ASUS P5ND2-SLI

EPoX EP-5NVA+SLI

GIGABYTE GA-8NNXP-SLI

MSI P4N Diamond

All of the above use traditional switching brackets for switching between PCI-E modes.

Source: PC Watch

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