Intel's "Turbo DDR 400" Canterwood aimed at fast 3D gaming

PC CUSTOMERS of Intel say that the firm has released more details of its 800MHz system bus, Prescott enabled Canterwood chipset, which supports hyperthreading and is scheduled to be introduced in the second quarter of next year.

As revealed here earlier, the Canterwood will support the current .13µ (micron) version of the Pentium 4, will have backward compatibility for 533MHz system buses, and include support for AGP8X, 4X and 1X.

The chipset will support four ECC DIMMs (dual inline memory modules) to a maximum of 4GB of memory, and will also have a special Turbo Mode, aimed at allowing enthusiasts to get that little bit extra out of their systems.

More details have emerged about this Turbo mode. It lets system level performance be tweaked, but only operates on 800MHz system buses and using DDR (double data rate) 400. Intel is telling its customers that they can expect a performance increase on multiple system level benchmarks, with fast silicon and special manufacturing allowing lower latency paths from the system bus to the 4GB of system memory.

That's done by using faster paths and bypassing paths, with the memory controller (MCH) imprivng the timings from processor to the DRAM.

A special, so-called, "dynamic mode" optimises the system memory. Intel gives some examples for this using double sided, matched DIMMs, single sided matched DIMMs, double and single sided unmatched DIMMs.

DDR 400 is only supported on the 800MHz front side bus for Canterwood, and Intel has released its specs for DDR 400, revision .9, to the Dramurai, the memory suppliers. Engineering samples are available with production expected in January, and volume at the end of Q1.

The Canterwood will include a 1005 pinFC-BGA with four major power rails - a 1.5 volt, a 2.55 volt, a 3.3 volt, and a VTT (1.15-1.60V).

Special heatsinks will be required for the four layer motherboard designs or the six layer motherboard designs.

Intel is aiming the Canterwood boards for production late Q1 of 2003, and it is aimed at performance PCs and for gaming enthusiasts.

It will position the Canterwood and Springdale chipsets as having 1.5 times faster system buses, two times the memory bandwidth at 6.4GB/s for dual channel DDR40, two times faster Gigabit Ethernet, 1.5 times faster hard drive connect using Serial ATA and two times faster AGP. The last is somewhat academic, still.

All in all, it's claiming a 43% boost fro Springdale and Canterwood 800FSBs which also support hyperthreading. µ

* WE HAVE SEEN benchmarks of the proposed performance of Canterwood and Springdale boards. Keep your eye out for breaking news.

See Also
How Intel will achieve "turbo" DDR memory mode
Intel outlines benchmarks for HT Pentium 4/800 using DDR 400
Intel roadmaps for 2002 and 2003