According to Intel, i875P chipset announced yesterday will become the top solution for desktop systems for about a year. The manufacturer claims that the dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM, supported by i875P, will remain the most up-to-date memory type for this time interval. It’s true, DDR I seems to be hardly able to get any faster in terms of working frequency, so that the future is definitely with DDR II. This statement is exactly the basis for Intel’s ongoing strategy in the chipset market.

So, on May 21 dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM is expected to come to the mainstream sector. At present Intel has only one chipset supporting dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM: i875P. It is pretty expensive (the official price of the new solution is $53), that is why it cannot be used in mainstream PCs. On May 21 2003 Intel will announce an analogue to its i875P, but targeted for the mainstream market. This will be the whole family of chipsets, aka i865, where the discrete version with RAID support will be priced at $37. The differences between i875P and i865 will imply no ECC support and slightly lower performance of the i865 solutions because they will not feature Intel’s PAT technology (Intel claims that the performance difference will be around 2-3%). i865 chipset family will include a common version aka i865PE and a solution with the integrated graphics core aka i865G. Later on Intel is going to stop distinguishing between the performance and mainstream chipsets this way. Both i865 and i875 chipset families will be replaced with a single chipset family aka Grantsdale next year. Intel Grantsdale is scheduled to come in Q2 2004.

Next generation Intel Grantsdale chipsets will also differ quite significantly from the predecessors, i875 and i865, due to a big number of enhancements introduced in it. As we managed to find out, Intel informed its partners about a few key innovations, which are worth mentioning.

Firstly, the new chipset will support DDR II memory, which will definitely lead to higher performance of the systems based on it. Intel assumes that in Q2 2004 DDR II memory will be quite popular and widely spread already.

Secondly, Grantsdale will support PCI Express x16 Connector for high-performance graphics cards, such as ATI R400 and NVIDIA NV40. They also stress that the integrated version of their Grantsdale chipset aka Grantsdale-G, will feature the third generation graphics core.

One more new connector supported by the new Grantsdale, the PCI Express x1 Connector, will be designed for new expansion cards supporting this bus. And in conclusion, Intel mentions that they will have more SerialATA ports supported by the new Grantsdale core logic. All these innovations will be implemented in the new ICH6/RAID South Bridge.

Summing up everything said above, I can figure out the major Grantsdale specifications list:

• 800MHz processor bus support;
• Supports CPUs designed in LGA775 package;
• Dual-channel DDR2-533/400 SDRAM;
• Dual-channel DDR400/333 SDRAM for better compatibility;
• Third generation integrated graphics core in Grantsdale-G;
• PCI Express x16 support;
• ICH6/RAID South Bridge with RAID support;
• 4 Serial ATA ports;
• PCI Express x1

The first CPUs to be used with Grantsdale chipset will be Pentium 4 processors on Prescott core working at 3.6GHz core clock. They will be announced together with Grantsdale chipset family. These CPUs will be designed in LGA775 form-factor, feature 1MB L2 cache, support Hyper-Threading technology and 800MHz bus.