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Articles: Editorial

X-bit labs CeBIT 2005 Coverage: Day 5 (page 6)

Category: Editorial

by Anton Shilov

[ 03/15/2005 | 04:06 PM ]

Concept AMD64 Mainboards in BTX Form-Factor Show Up

BTX form-factor that first faced commercial introduction last year is not popular at all these days. Historically it took the industry about 5-6 years to drive a new PC form-factor to 80% of computers available on the market and the projection that BTX may require 7 years may turn out to be correct. Nevertheless, some companies not only develop commercial BTX mainboard for processors from the main inventor of the BTX – Intel Corp. – but also for chips from Advanced Micro Devices.

At CeBIT 2005 chipmaker Silicon Integrated Systems and mainboard and barebone manufacturer First International Computer unveiled their conceptual BTX mainboards that support AMD Athlon 64 processors. Both showcases are probably mainly aimed at system integrators to reassure them BTX form-factor can be implemented for AMD64 processors.

SiS shows off its concept mainboard based on SiS756 North Bridge and SiS966 South Bridge and provides sufficient level of I/O capabilities for today – PCI Express, Serial ATA, USB 2.0 are there, so is support for AMD’s PGA939 processors, including the top-end Athlon 64 FX chips. The main thing about the mainboard is still the fact that it is a reference design and it is unclear whether mainboards and systems makers will adopt it.

Another plan to use BTX form-factor for AMD64 central processing units could be found at the roadmap of FIC. Apparently, the company wants to introduce a yet another mainboard based on NVIDIA’s chipset code-named C51 in addition to its KTMC51G – the KTBC51G. The product is expected to support AMD Athlon 64 processors in addition to PCI bus and everything that the integrated version of the nForce4 chipset can provide does not even have a prototype yet.

Both examples of BTX usage for AMD Athlon 64-series processors mean one thing – BTX is starting to pickup, but very slowly and uncertainly. The main drivers of BTX adoption are still largest computer makers, such as Dell and HP, as well as Intel Corp..