Platform Conference 2003: HyperTransport 2.0, DDR II, etc.
Pity, the Californian Platform Conference 2003, that took place this week, wasn’t described much in the news. But exactly this event might become the most interesting due to the Chinese New Year, celebrated from today. Well, let’s see what Japanese sources have to offer.
Let’s pass by the story about Barton releases, prepared by AMD for February, for now as they are close and all the announcements will arrive at their time. In addition, AMD doesn´t deny the possibility of supporting Athlon XP 400MHz FSB that can become another plus for NVIDIA nForce2-based motherboards.
AMD has also presented the schedule of HyperTransport Consortium for the next-generation HyperTransport 2.0, which final version, is expected to be released in the end of this / the beginning of next year. According to provisional data, HyperTransport 2.0 will define up to 3-5 Gbit per a physical contact couple throughput. At that 16-bit HyperTransport bus will provide up to 20Gb/s performance, 32-bit one – up to 40Gb/s. The current HyperTransport specs define 1600Mbps per contact performance, up to 1.8Gb/s for 32-bit bus. Last week brought us the extended HyperTransport 1.05 standard, so now consortium members are developing the programme for other companies to easily move to HyperTransport production.
HyperTransport version for fiber-optics is expected closer to the year-end.
The conference also brought information from JEDEC´s DDR II division. Now we know that new-generation DDR will be officially named DDR II, at that DRAM modules will be marked like:
- PC2-3200 — DDR II 400, 3.2Gb/s
- PC2-4300 — DDR II 533 4.3Gb/s
- PC2-5400 — DDR II 667 5.4 3.2 Gb/s
- PC2-6400 — DDR II 800 6.4 3.2 Gb/s
By the way, there was an opinion about DDR400 (PC3200) adoption that the industry is just not ready for DDR II widespreading, mainly due to economical reasons. This makes the intermediate DDR400 really important.
Micron Technology showcased a working system with DDR II-533 (PC2-4300) memory. According to Micron representatives, which offered detailed information about closest memory roadmaps, in H1 2003 the company plans to release dual-channel modules on DDR333 (2.5-3-3) chips, in H2 – dual-channel modules on DDR400 (2.5-3-3) chips.
The story from Micron was tied to Intel’s future-generation processor roadmap, in particular, with Intel 875P (Canterwood), Intel 865PE (Springdale-PE), Intel 865G (Springdale-G), expected in Q2 2003, supporting 800MHz FSB and DDR400; and also with future Tejas and 1066MHz FSB. According to Micron, volume production of DDR2-400/533 chips will become actual that time. Next year Micron is to launch the production of dual-channel DDR533 (4-4-4), DDR333 (2-2-2) and DDR400 (3-3-3) modules. The company said that notebooks will start to support DDR2-533 only in H2 2004.
According to Samsung, the launch of volume production of 512Mb DDR400 modules is scheduled to April 2003. The company plans to raise DDR333/400 production to 50% of all manufacture in Q2 and to 80% by the year-end. Samsung doesn’t expect any serious demand for DDR II for desktop systems until 2004, focusing mainly on DDR400.
Infineon announced samples of PC2-5400 memory on DDR II 667 chips.
Source: PC Watch
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