AMD to integrate PCIe
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24756

Yousuf Khan

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005 07:58:35 -0700, YKhan wrote:

> AMD to integrate PCIe
> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24756
>
> Yousuf Khan

Two thoughts occur first that motherboards are about to get a fair bit
cheaper and second that overclocking is about to get more complex.

sounds like motherboards are basicly going to get turned into sockets and
a few things that wouldn't work inside the cpu. im sure ive read somewhere
that wireless and sound will need to remain seperate due to the way they
work.

Wireless, sound, IDE/SATA, USB/Firewire. Too many features that just
don't deserve a piece of the CPU real-estate, and don't really need the
full speed of the CPU to be dedicated to them. Just a CPU and a
southbridge basically. Just one step removed from a SOC.

Other things I see them possibly using the integrated PCI-e connector
for is integrated shared memory video. They can use the PCI-e video
protocols to share memory with the integrated video chipset directly.

Another use would be to offer even faster full dual-x16 SLI/Crossfire
support. They can connect one high-end video card to a northbridge x16
connector while the other one uses the CPU's x16 connector.

On the server front, they can connect things like commodity PCI-e
Infiniband cards directly to the CPU for HPC clusters.

Yousuf Khan

YKhan wrote:
>
> On the server front, they can connect things like commodity PCI-e
> Infiniband cards directly to the CPU for HPC clusters.
>
LOM..."Landed-on-motherboard" more likely.

RM

Robert Myers wrote:
> YKhan wrote:
> >
> > On the server front, they can connect things like commodity PCI-e
> > Infiniband cards directly to the CPU for HPC clusters.
> >
> LOM..."Landed-on-motherboard" more likely.

No, that is already done now, through Hypertransport. But built-in
Infiniband would be a very specialized requirement. That would make it
a very specialized subcategory of an already specialized subcategory.
Can't see the economies of scale being all that good for a motherboard
with built-in Infiniband. This way they can plug a bog-standard PCIe
Infiniband adapter (as bog-standard as those things get anyways), and
get slightly better latency out of it. May not be as good as
motherboard Infiniband, but better than through a chipset PCIe
connector.

Yousuf Khan

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005 18:12:37 GMT, epaton <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>On Wed, 20 Jul 2005 07:58:35 -0700, YKhan wrote:
>
>> AMD to integrate PCIe
>> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24756
>>
>> Yousuf Khan
>
>Two thoughts occur first that motherboards are about to get a fair bit
>cheaper and second that overclocking is about to get more complex.
>
>sounds like motherboards are basicly going to get turned into sockets and
>a few things that wouldn't work inside the cpu. im sure ive read somewhere
>that wireless and sound will need to remain seperate due to the way they
>work.
>
Poor VIA, SIS, and ULI - they will be relegated to making commodity
south bridges, or fight mighty Intel for a piece of Pentium chipset
market. Nvidia and ATI have at least something to fall back on -
graphics. High end GPU will stay separate from CPU at least for quite
a while. OTOH, low end GPU may find its way into south bridges,
making them a bit less of a cheap commodity.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Poor VIA, SIS, and ULI - they will be relegated to making commodity
> south bridges, or fight mighty Intel for a piece of Pentium chipset
> market. Nvidia and ATI have at least something to fall back on -
> graphics. High end GPU will stay separate from CPU at least for quite
> a while. OTOH, low end GPU may find its way into south bridges,
> making them a bit less of a cheap commodity.
>

Considering the cooling requirements of even a low-end GPU (cooling fins
coming out all over the place), it's unlikely that they'll try to
integrate the GPU with the southbridge. The video chip overheats and you
lose connection to your hard drives? :-)

Yousuf Khan

On Fri, 22 Jul 2005 08:38:58 -0400, Yousuf Khan <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>> Poor VIA, SIS, and ULI - they will be relegated to making commodity
>> south bridges, or fight mighty Intel for a piece of Pentium chipset
>> market. Nvidia and ATI have at least something to fall back on -
>> graphics. High end GPU will stay separate from CPU at least for quite
>> a while. OTOH, low end GPU may find its way into south bridges,
>> making them a bit less of a cheap commodity.
>>
>
>Considering the cooling requirements of even a low-end GPU (cooling fins
>coming out all over the place), it's unlikely that they'll try to
>integrate the GPU with the southbridge. The video chip overheats and you
>lose connection to your hard drives? :-)
>
> Yousuf Khan

Low end GPU like X300 can do with passive heatsink, and quite a few
north bridges now need a fan even without graphics. So they'll slap a
fan on the south bridge/GPU combo. If a fan is not enough a BIG fan
will do. After all they'll need to sell something, and the market for
cheap integrated chipsets will always be there. Looks like nobody at
Intel is afraid to lose connection to RAM because the integrated
Extreme Graphics could overheat ;-)

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Low end GPU like X300 can do with passive heatsink, and quite a few
> north bridges now need a fan even without graphics. So they'll slap a
> fan on the south bridge/GPU combo. If a fan is not enough a BIG fan
> will do. After all they'll need to sell something, and the market for
> cheap integrated chipsets will always be there. Looks like nobody at
> Intel is afraid to lose connection to RAM because the integrated
> Extreme Graphics could overheat ;-)
>

One thing nobody has mentioned yet is the shear irony of this situation.
Intel created PCI-e as a competitor to Hypertransport, because they
refused to adhere to a standard that AMD came up with. AMD gave the
green light to PCI-e without even a fight, knowing full well that PCI-e
and HT would be compatible with each other (just slightly different
physical layers), and now it may come up with the first PCI-e integrated
into the CPU.

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:
> (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>
>> Low end GPU like X300 can do with passive heatsink, and quite a few
>> north bridges now need a fan even without graphics. So they'll slap a
>> fan on the south bridge/GPU combo. If a fan is not enough a BIG fan
>> will do. After all they'll need to sell something, and the market for
>> cheap integrated chipsets will always be there. Looks like nobody at
>> Intel is afraid to lose connection to RAM because the integrated
>> Extreme Graphics could overheat ;-)
>>
>
> One thing nobody has mentioned yet is the shear irony of this situation.
> Intel created PCI-e as a competitor to Hypertransport, because they
> refused to adhere to a standard that AMD came up with. AMD gave the
> green light to PCI-e without even a fight, knowing full well that PCI-e
> and HT would be compatible with each other (just slightly different
> physical layers), and now it may come up with the first PCI-e integrated
> into the CPU.
>
> Yousuf Khan

Sigh. where do you guys get these fairy stories? PCI-E was invented as
an IO expansion network to replace pci-x which was reaching the end of
its rope and took too many pins. InfiniBand was too server oriented.

Is everybody in this group full of conspiracy theories? I am really
starting to wonder about you guys.

--
Del Cecchi
"This post is my own and doesn’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions,
strategies or opinions.”