All Intel P4 chipsets to support hyperthreading

AS WE'VE POINTED out before, Intel's chipset partners - ATI and SIS, plus the renegade Pentium 4 chipset maker Via - will have little to offer in the way of hyperthreading enabled chipsets in the future.

Being a partner of Intel can be a tiresome business, almost as tiring as being a renegade producer of chipsets.

The jury is still out on how well the hyperthreading technology which will first be implemented on the 3.06GHz Pentium 4 in mid November, will perform. Intel promised us at its last development forum that it will release benchmarks for a mass of software applications at release time.

What's now for sure, according to the latest confidential roadmaps the INQUIRER has seen, is that Intel is ready to support hyperthreading on all of its current P4 chipsets, indicating that it's going to make a big push in an attempt to convince the world+dog that it represents a real performance boost.

The roadmaps show that at launch time, the 850E - Intel's Rambus chipset, the 845PE, the 845GE and the 845GV will all support hyperthreading.

These chipsets will only be around for a little while however.

The exception is the 845GV, which in its B-Step revision will also support hyperthreading but will continue past the launch of the Springdales, bridging the value and mainstream markets, and that's also true for the 845GL, the cut down Celeron P4 chipset.

The roadmaps also show that Springdale P and Springdale G are on target for a Q2 launch, and the next speed step for the Pentium 4 after the 3.06GHz is a 3.20GHz+ microprocessor, also scheduled for Q2 of next year.

Springdale P supports discrete graphics only, the 667/533 and 400MHz front side buses, dual DDR 333 memory, AGP 8X and ICH5 with Serial ATA.

The Springdale G chipset is identical except that it will support integrated and discrete GFX (graphics).

Both Springdale chipsets, we can also report, are currently sampling with Intel's motherboard customers and PC manufacturers, indicating to us that the firm is pretty far advanced with its plans for this future push.

When the Springdale P and G chipsets are introduced, distributors, dealers and manufacturers are likely to breathe a sigh of relief. The four P4 chipsets will disappear and there will be some simplification, at last, in the over complex market.

The 810E and the 815 family will live until the end of Q1 next year when they will be terminated. µ

See Also
Our comprehensive Intel roadmaps