Intel launches Grantsdale and Alderwood chipsets, Pentium 4 5xx-series

Santa Clara (CA) - Intel today officially announced what the company calls its most revolutionary chip design in several years : The PCI Express chipsets 915 G/P and 925 integrate an armada of new features, including W-Fi and RAID capability. Intel also introduced new Pentium 4 processors with up to 3.6 GHz.

Much confusion surrounded the launch date of Intel’s hyped new chipsets 915 and 925, formerly code-named Grantsdale and Alderwood respectively. While the company was touring the world with presentations and held product presentations in New York and San Francisco, details and specs were officially released Saturday.

The buzz around Grantsdale and Alderwood is justified. No other Intel chipset in the past decade offered a similar array of innovation and new features. "We have changed every major technology of the platform," said Roger Peene, chipset product marketing manager at Intel’s Desktop Platform Group. He compared the switch to the 915/925 to the change from ISA to PCI more than ten years ago.

A view on the spec sheet reveals that all three chipsets announced come with a load of new features, which will push Intel towards an entertainment-focused platform. Base model for business and home computers is the 915P Express chipset with support a 800 MHz and 533 MHz front side bus (FSB) as well as DDR and DDR2 - the latter is a first for Intel. Additionally, the chipset features High Definition audio, integrates Wi-Fi capability through Intel’s Wireless Connect technology and offers x16 graphics. The chipset support RAID 0 and RAID 1 as well as the Pentium 4 5xx-series processors in LGA775 packaging.

The 915G chipset adds integrated GMA 900 graphics. According Peene, the 900 is aimed at the mainstream user and should perform well in typical home multimedia applications such as playing DVDs. As before, Intel will stay in the low-priced segment and not compete in the "enthusiast discrete integrated graphics market", leaving enough space for players such as ATI and Nvidia to introduce higher performing products.

The 925X chipset is built on the same architecture as the 915, but comes with several enhancements "to increase performance." Peene said that the 925 likely will be limited to higher end systems equipped with Extreme Edition Pentium 4 processors. The 925 supports ECC and reduces latencies between the FSB and the memory resulting in a three to six percent better performance, if compared to the 915 G/P, Peene said.

The Wi-Fi feature (802.11b/g) of the 915/925 could become a controversial feature of the new chipset. According to Intel, it could be used either as Access Point (AP) or client. To come alive, it needs a software layer (SoftAP) as well as a PC Card. The latter has to be an "Intel-branded" card in order to use the firm’s "Wireless Connect" technology. Other brands - such as cards from Linksys or Netgear - will not work with the 915/925 out of the box. Products from third party manufacturers can only be enabled through the additional installation of a software layer provided by those respective companies.

Many users likely will stick to Intel’s solution just like they do with the Internet Explorer which is preinstalled with Windows rather than buying and installing a third party product. Intel’s goal always has been to extend its reach by selling more and new types of chips and the company certainly will succeed here,. But the company also will surely upset other developers of PC cards, by cutting down their business. As it promoted its Centrino platform, Intel again says that the Wi-Fi feature is convenient to use, stable and will bring new users to the technology who otherwise would have been too afraid of trying something new.

Peene said that the Wi-Fi feature likely will not be available in significant numbers when the chipsets make their way in PCs initially. Simply because system builders will need time to enable and design the feature in their products, Intel expects more and more products with wireless capability to appear towards the end of 2004.

Analysts are not surprised that Intel restricts access to its technology, since the company had similar strategies in the past, for example when it introduced a proprietary Gigabit Ethernet interface for its chipsets. Dean McCarron, analyst with Mercury Research, believes that Intel’s move will leave enough business to other Wi-Fi manufacturers since the chip manufacturer is "far from having a monopoly in the chipset market". Also, the 915 G/P and 925 are "not the only chipsets Intel offers, " he said.

A new approach also is the integration of RAID functionality. Dubbed Matrix Storage technology, the chipsets support two harddrives in RAID configuration. RAID 1 will protect data through redundancy, RAID 0 will improve performance, Peene said. According to the manager, it is "very likely" that even mainstream PCs will use two harddrives in RAID configuration soon.

Additional features include a High Definition audio solution, which simultaneously can send multiple audio streams through the PC’s output jacks, allowing one user to listen to MP3s with headphones, while another user can watch a video with multi-channel surround sound from the same PC.

PCs with 915/925 chipsets should be available immediately, according to Intel. 915-based machines should be priced from about $850 ; 925-computers will hit the $2000 mark.

Intel also formally introduced the Pentium 4 5xx-series in LGA775 packaging. Top end is the model 560, clocked with 3.60 GHz and available for $637 in 1,000 unit quantities. The other new models are the 550 (3.4 GHz, $417), 540 (3.20 GHz, $278), 530 (3.00 GHz, $218) and the 520 (2.80 GHz, $178). The Extreme Edition (EE) of the Pentium 4 also is available in the new package and a clock speed of 3.40 GHz ($999). As before, the EE carries 512 kByte L2 cache and 2 MByte L3 cache while the other Pentium 4’s come with 1 MByte L2 cache.