Via Technologies will announce in May a DDR2- and PCI Express-ready chipset, the PT890, says Richard Brown, a Via associate vice president.
Via is already demonstrating the chipset on its stand at the Cebit trade fair in Hanover, Germany. The demonstration model is running with DDR400 but Via says it is ready for double data rate 2, and all subsequent chipsets will be so, as well. It is being shown with a 3.7GHz Intel Pentium 4 and a 800MHz frontside bus.
Faster Performance
DDR2 is a new memory architecture that lets memory chips run faster without losing signal quality, and with lower power consumption. A technique called differential signaling doubles the number of signals a memory chip can process compared to standard DDR memory, and on-die termination means that the chip absorbs more of the signal noise.
Via is also readying two two Pentium M chipset models, the PN800 and PN880, which support 400-MHz DDR memory.
PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) Express is a high-speed bus technology that connects the microprocessor to any attached devices. It has a lower pin count than standard PCI, so that it takes up less room, and higher performance at 250 megabits per second per port, which is almost twice that of current PCI slots.
Both DDR2 and PCI Express are going to be the hot technologies this year, Brown said, and all Via products will be compatible with both from now on.
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