Intel's Granite Bay gets mixed mobo support

It also confirmed it is shipping 130 nanometer Xeon processors supporting the 533MHz front side bus - something the channel has waited for for a while.

But support for the workstation-based "Granite Bay" chipset is a trifle muted, with some motherboard makers, despite having put the necessary R&D work into it, not deciding to announce or launch the chipset.

Support for the 7505 (Placer) chipset is far more robust. Gigabyte, however, has introduced the GA-INXP, which supports Granite Bay, details here. The P4 Titan 667.

One of the problems with the Granite Bay chipset is that the motherboard makers have already been told about the 800MHz system bus "Canterwood" chipset, which Intel is now expected to launch in the second quarter of next year.

That's concentrated the minds of the mobo makers. It only gives them until the end of this year and the first quarter of next year to manufacture and sell, before they have to concentrate on the next chipset trundling along on the Intel gravy train.

After spending quite a chunk of this year developing Granite Bay boards - we saw several prototypes at Computex in June - the manufacturers of third party boards had to decide whether to plunge ahead with launches or keep their powder dry for Canterwood.

This happens quite a lot in Taiwan - the mobo makers just have to sigh, grind their teeth, moan off the record to all of us, and grumble a bit or a lot, depending on what it's cost them.

One example was Intel's ill-fated "Timna" project, where several manufacturers actually had completed their builds, only to find out that Chipzilla pulled the carpet on the whole shebang.

The other notable example is when Intel decided to change the pinouts for the Pentium 4, leaving mobo makers with the unenviable headache of having to develop boards for two pinouts.

None of this is to say that Granite Bay isn't a wondrous chipset - it may well offer unparalleled performance.

Unfortunately, Intel feels it has to push ahead with an 800MHz system bus and take other actions to show AMD and its PC customers it's got what it takes.

When that kind of thing (marchitecture) happens, everyone's just got to bite their lip and take the hit. µ