At the recently held in Taiwan Rambus Developer Forum, SiS announced a new SiSR658 chipset supporting RDRAM. The new solution is targeted for high-performance desktop PCs and workstations and supports Intel Pentium 4 CPUs with 400MHz and 533MHz bus.

SiSR658 chipset includes a new SiSR658 North Bridge and a South Bridge, which we have already come across in SiS648, SiS746: SiS963. The new North Bridge supports AGP 8x bus and two Rambus channels. SiSR658 boasts even more attractive features than Intel i850E, thus officially supporting not only PC800 but also PC1066 RDRAM. It is also important that the new solution from SiS can work with 4-banck RDRAM modules, which should theoretically cost a bit less than the traditional 32bank modules. All in all, SiSR658 supports up to 4GB of memory and ECC, which can allow using this chipset in professional fields as well. However, the future of SiSR658 directly depends on SiS’ reputation. Will it be enough to convince the manufacturers to use this product in PCs requiring high reliability in the first place? No idea yet...

As for the South Bridge, SiS963, its features have been already discussed many times. Among them are: high-speed MuTIOL bus connecting the bridges at 1GB/sec, ARA/133 support, 6 USB 2.0 ports, 3 IEEE1394 ports, AC’97 2.2 sound and 10/100Mbit Ethernet MAC.

The schedule and pricing haven’t yet been discussed.