Dokter Tom blurbt dat de Intel 'Almador' chipset met (DDR) SDRAM support, waarvan het bestaan begin deze week door PC Welt aan het licht werd gebracht, niet bedoelt is voor Willamette maar voor een nieuwe generatie Coppermines. Deze Coppermines zullen op 0,13 micron geproduceerd worden en hebben een lager voltage van 1,3 V. Als deze informatie van Tom juist is dan is er nog steeds geen zekerheid over het bestaan van een SDRAM Willamette chipset:
You could find it on the website of the German Magazine 'PC-Welt' late yesterday and then later on The Register as well. Intel is developing a chipset that will support (DDR?)-SDRAM. This chipset carries the code name 'Almador', not 'Armador', and is scheduled for the beginning of 2001. Our latest information shows however, that 'Almador' is not a chipset for Intel's next generation IA32 processor with the code name 'Willamette', but for the upcoming low-voltage 'Coppermine'. Those future 'Coppermine' processors are nothing mystical; they are not just notebook CPUs, but the next generation Pentium III processors manufactured in 0.13 micron process. Thus the GTL+ signals will carry 1.3 V instead of the 1.5 V that are used by 'Coppermine' Pentium III right now. You can imagine, that the lower GTL+-voltage requires a new chipset and that's what 'Almador' is going to be.You have certainly read the Solano Preview yesterday and might remember my little quiz at the end of the article. Well, the answer is clear, the performance of Solano would obviously increase even more if DDR SDRAM was supported by it. Thus RDRAM would be declassed even more too. The 'Almador' info comes just at the right moment in time, because 'Almador' will obviously be the successor of Solano (aka 'i815'), and it comes with integrated 3D graphics as well. This is really good news and shows that Intel might have realized that they can score a huge amount of plus points with their worldwide customers if they offer alternatives to RDRAM. Now the only thing I want to hear is that there will indeed be a chipset for 'Willamette', which will support different memory than RDRAM as well. DDR SDRAM seems to be the most obvious choice right now, but I am aware that there are even faster alternatives to Rambus under development right now. It wouldn't surprise me if Intel was looking into those as well. This could mean that the Rambus star is slowly sinking.
Verder heeft Tommie in z'n blurb het een en ander te melden over de i815 chipset en de i820+MTH terugroep actie.