Bunch of Next-Generation NVIDIA nForce Core-Logic to Come

by Anton Shilov
06/10/2003 | 07:48 AM

NVIDIA keeps on strengthening its chipset business and by the end of the year there will be loads of core-logic products from the Santa Clara, California-based company. It is quite natural that there will be different products for both Socket A and Socket 754 platforms available.

As we already told you, shortly NVIDIA will release a couple of new MCPs for the current nForce2 platform. These will be the nForce2 MCP-S and MCP-S1000 with Parallel ATA-33/66/100/133, Serial ATA-150 connectors, 8 USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet controllers, 3 FireWire (IEEE1394) ports, Dolby Digital encoder as well as PCI and ACR buses. The MCP-S1000 also adds Gigabit Ethernet support to the capabilities mentioned above. See this news-story for more information about the parts.

Mainboard makers receive these I/O controllers in 10 days, the volume production is expected to begin in August and massive availability will be in September.

Besides variety of Socket A chipsets, NVIDIA will bring the largest portfolio of core-logic devices for AMD64 platform as well.

At this very point NVIDIA offers its first core-logic for workstations, namely, the  nForce3 Pro 150 (see this news-story). It supports basic features, such as, a Hyper-Transport link, AGP 8x, PCI, 3 Parallel ATA-33/66/100/133 channels with RAID 0,1 and 0+1 support, 10/100Mb/s Ethernet, USB 2.0, AC’97 audio and so on. The second one, the nForce3 Pro 250, will be a bit more advanced and will provide Gigabit Ethernet as well as 4 Serial ATA-150 ports in addition to existing features. Both nForce3 Pro are intended for AMD Opteron processors. There will be bunch of chipsets designed for AMD Athlon 64 as well:

• NVIDIA Crush K8: AGP 8x, USB 2.0, Three Parallel ATA-33/66/100/133; NV RAID; NV Ethernet; PCI 2.3; AC’97. Ready to go. Single chip.
• NVIDIA Crush K8S: AGP 8x, USB 2.0, Three Parallel ATA-33/66/100/133; Serial ATA-150; NV RAID, NV Ethernet; Gigabit Ethernet; PCI 2.3, AC’97. Single chip. The Inquirer said over here the schedule for the K8S means the A01 tape out will be in July, customers will get samples in August, production samples will be available in October, and mass production in November, if all goes well.
• NVIDIA Crush K8 Pro: Ready to go.
• NVIDIA Crush K8G3: Integrated solution with the GeForce FX class graphics.
• NVIDIA Crush K8 3GIO: Sample in Q4 2003, PCI Express interconnection for graphics.

Generally speaking, Crush K8 and Crush K8S resemble nForce3 Pro 150 and 250 respectively. I believe we may expect them to come a bit earlier than it was reported because of this in case everything works well with the nForce3 Pro solutions. I assume NVIDIA will also release another couple of Opteron-intended chipsets with PCI Express support in 2004.