NVIDIA PCIe Bridge Chip Unveiled

Behind closed doors at IDF NVIDIA showed a GeForce FX 5200 prototype card with PCI Express. The first wave of NVIDIA’s linecard of PCI Express cards, called GeForce PCX, will feature a special bridge solution, called HSI. This chip translates the PCIe signals from the motherboard into AGP signals.

A prototype board. The bridge is cooled by a passive heatsink.

The prototype also features some additional chips on the PCB for debugging reasons.

The new NVIDIA HSI bridge chip...

...and from another angle.

Native PCIe solutions will be announced later this year by NVIDIA.