by Anton Shilov
03/23/2004 | 03:57 AM
We continue to tell you about the hottest events at CeBIT 2004 trade-show. The third day as expected appeared to be pretty crowded – that is because it is Saturday and a lot of people from Hannover and nearby are heading to the European’s key technology show – CeBIT.
<%BANNER[article]%>On the other hand, there are a little bit less representatives for IT companies among visitors and also less people who go to the exhibition with a purpose, therefore, it is easier to get to a transport. Unfortunately, traffic jams are still a problem and they will probably remain on Sunday as well. Anyway, what to expect from an exhibition that has 700 thousand of visitors?
Visiting S3 Graphics’ booth that is co-located with VIA Technologies is something I would consider as “promising”. The company that once used to be the No.1 graphics chip designer and in the total oblivion the other time is now returning into the market. Maybe S3 Graphics does not produce the fastest chips on the planet, but its fair-play and ability to work on driver issues leaves an astonishingly good impression about the company’s come-back.
The main activity of S3 Graphics today is to improve performance and ensure stability of its DeltaChrome graphics processors. In fact, the company has quite notable memory bandwidth saving technologies that include Z-compression, rapid Z clear and some tile-like approaches for optimized rendering (tile size is reprogrammable and can be either 2x4 or 4x2 pixels). Moreover, there are additional ways to improve performance of the DeltaChrome, so, generally speaking, S3 is now quite optimistic about the future. Once available, Delta Chrome S4 Nitro, S8 and S8 Nitro will be quite affordable, probably at price points below specified earlier.
S3 Graphics does not have plans to introduce PCI Express solutions shortly. There will be no S3-based graphics cards with PEG->AGP bridges, like those used by NVIDIA or XGI. Instead, the company aims to deliver a new architecture that has native PCI Express interface and tangibly improved performance of the currently available products. The chip named GammaChrome is expected to be formally released in summer 2004 with actual graphics cards shipping sometime towards the Fall. Currently no precise details are given in regards speeds and timeframes simply because there is hardly a point to specify them nearly two quarters prior the shipments.
Just like NVIDIA and ATI S3 Graphics is currently developing a special improved compiler for shaders to incorporate it into its drivers. The new compiler will bring a performance advantage to the DeltaChrome chips, but its main target is the GammaChrome architecture. It is possible to expect that GammaChrome will take a very substantial advantage of the compiler in addition to generally revamped architecture.
At this time S3 Graphics has no plans to implement the Pixel Shaders 3.0 and Vertex Shaders 3.0 support into its GammaChrome or any other future products before Microsoft’s DirectX 10 is out. The company believes that the majority of graphics effects that can be done with Shaders 3.0 may also be done using Shaders 2.0. A very big jump for the industry, the company notes, is DirectX 10 with Pixel Shaders 4.0 and Vertex Shaders 4.0, while the version 3.0 is probably not a feature consumers may really need.
Last year ALi span off its chipset division into an independent company – ULi Electronics – that is primarily focused on chipsets and other related host-based peripherals. More than a couple of years passed since ALi’s chipsets were on the market, so, for ULi it is a big problem today to come back, as the company needs to convince mainboard makers as well as actual end-users that its technology is enough confident and reliable compared to solutions by Intel, VIA, SiS, NVIDIA and so on.
In fact, ULi is doing pretty well in the mobile market, the company is the main supplier of core-logic components for Transmeta-based systems, moreover, the firm supplies loads of I/O controllers for notebooks with North Bridges by ATI Technologies. Right now ULi believes that sales of Transmeta Crusoe and Transmeta Efficeon processors will uptick late this year, which will essentially mean higher sales for ULi.
Mobile market is certainly not the only market ULi wants to address. Fortunately, the company already has some interesting products for desktops as well as design wins with mainboard makers, but one of the things the company really needs today is demand for its solutions from customers. At CeBIT the firm is demonstrating numerous mainboards from well-known manufacturers, such as ASUSTeK Computer, Albatron, ASRock, ECS, EPoX, DFI, SOYO, QDI and Topstar, for AMD Athlon 64 and Intel Pentium 4 processors based on M1687 and M1683 chipsets respectively. All those mainboards are available now, but in somewhat limited quantities.
Besides mainboards, ULi/ALi is also showcasing some notebooks, standalone controllers and even a USB HDTV tuner.
The most impressive thing in the booth probably is demonstration of a mainboard for PGA939 AMD64 processors powered by M1689 – the first single-chip core-logic from ULi. The company will start shipping this product in July , which is not that bad, as the M1689 may end up as a good competitor for NVIDIA’s nForce3 250, as feature-set of ULi’s M1689 seems to be pretty similar.
In the second half of the year ULi also plans a new chipset for Intel Pentium 4 processors. The company’s M1685 (with M1566 I/O controller) will sport PCI Express interconnections x16, x4 and x1; single-channel DDR and DDR2 memory controller as well as all Pentium 4 and Pentium M microprocessors.
Given that all ULi’s chipsets have pretty efficient power-management, I believe that they all may also be used in mobile computers, especially those for desktop PC replacement.
There are very few DDR2 memory modules available in the market and there are DDR memory sticks working at faster clock-speeds than DDR2 products. Keeping in mind lower cost of DDR memory now, massive ramp of DDR2 products definitely looks pretty cloudy for the next couple of quarters. Nevertheless, this does not indicate that DDR2 does not have any bright sides at all. One of such benefits is scalability – ability to work at higher clock-speeds. 667MHz cannot be achieved with conventional DDR memory, but can be delivered using DDR2 technology. While the industry expects 667MHz memory to ramp next year, GeIL has such modules in its CeBIT 2004 booth out now.
The company plans to start shipping PC2-5300 memory modules that can pump up to 10.6GB/s in dual-channel mode already during the second quarter of the year to let overclockers to reach new performance heights. Latency settings for the memory modules are set to 4-4-4, equal to PC2-4200 (533MHz) memory modules. Memory modules are equipped with aluminum heat-spreaders and also with GeIL’s thermal sticker.
Thing that is not clear about the modules is their pricing.
Albatron is not demonstrating loads of new components at CeBIT 2004, but there are clearly some very interesting pieces of hardware in their booth.
Following Intel’s requests, Albatron is demonstrating only i915G/i915P mainboards with integrated Intel Extreme Graphics 3 core and is not demonstrating i925X-based products at all. Just like some other companies, Albatron believes there will be no need in high-speed and expensive DDR2 memory for current applications, therefore, the firm will not concentrate on bringing this type of memory to the mainstream market, at least initially. Only Alderwood-based mainboards from Albatron will have 204-pin DDR2 slots.
Socket T and PCI Express are probably considered as very important features of this year’s platforms by Albatron – they are expected to be available across the whole lineup of Albatron’s new mainboards this year. The firm has a live demonstration of an LGA775 system in their booth, but when I had a meeting with Albatron, their technicians were setting up the computer and gave me an opportunity to picture Intel’s pin-less processor – a Pentium 4 chip in LGA775 packaging.
In addition to mainboards and consumer electronics products, Albatron also has NVIDIA’s range of PCI Express graphics cards to showcase. I was pretty curious about NVIDIA’s PCI Express-to-AGP bridge and asked our Albatron’s friends to remove the heatsink from it. The bridge turned to be extremely tiny and probably very cheap to manufacture.
Besides, I discovered that NVIDIA’s graphics card partners will supply a yet another NV35-based graphics card with PCI Express interface this year – GeForce PCX 5900. It is based on the same simplistic and probably very cost-effective PCB as the GeForce PCX 5950 and may end up as a really good price/performance hero, as it still has 256-bit bus and 400MHz or higher graphics processor.
Small form-factor PCs are certainly gaining momentum nowadays. There are loads of cube-like barebones at CeBIT, therefore, it was not a surprise for me to see one in Albatron’s booth as well. The first PC barebone from Albatron will probably be available pretty soon and will be based on i865G chipset supporting all modern features except PCI Express and LGA775. Albatron’s SFF systems featuring these two upcoming technologies will probably be out sometime later this year.
That is a big pity, but I still have not been to NVIDIA’s booth. Although it is located in a very good place, there are too lot of people over there and besides we have arranged a meeting with some of our friends from NVIDIA for Sunday, so, I decided not to visit the booth before that, but to hang around NVIDIA’s add-in-cards partners to see what they are showcasing.
In fact, no one is demonstrating the highly-anticipated code-named NV40 graphics processor at this point. What they do is showing off the GeForce PCX solutions based on architecture that is about one year old.
The only thing I could get about the NV40 is that it was showcased on Friday, on Saturday and will be demonstrated on Tuesday behind closed doors under NDA and only for customers of a particular company, for instance, Microstar International.
What we do now about the NV40 (MS-8966) for sure right now is that it will have high performance in DirectX 9.0 applications, will sport 128MB and 256MB memory configurations, will be intended for AGP 8x bus and will sport DVI connectors.