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PCI: Dead. AGP: Dead. Say hello to PCI Express
New BUS protocol will completely reinvent your motherboard
PCI Express appears ready to make its debuton schedulein Intels upcoming Grantsdale chipset later nest year. Formerly code-named 3GIO (For Third Generation I/O), PCI Express will smash current bandwidth and power-supply bottlenecks, and send AGP, PCI, and PC Cards the way of the dodo. Its a good thing that PCI Express is ready to roll, because Grantsdale chipset is being readied to support Tejas, a truly new core processor architecture that some are already nicknaming Pentium 5. Tejas is competing for the title of Pentium 5 with the new Prescott core, which is going to be based on the .09nm process, .04nm smaller than the current P5, which is already heading towards the .05nm process, making transistors smaller than the influenza virus. Predictions for 2010 say that equivilant processors like the Pentium 4 could reach upwards of 15GHz - 20GHZ+. The Prescott core is also going to double the present L2 cache from 512kb to 1MB, and make them run cooler than any other CPU to date. The main advantage the Tejas core will have though, is the PCI Express.
PCI Expresswhich is both a hardware interface standard and a transmission protocolis expected to endure on motherboards for the next 10 years or more. The key to this longevity will be unprecedented scalability. Thats right: Notebooks, desktops, workstations, and servers will all adopt the wondrously generous PCI Express. For this reason, the new I/O standard will be even more revolutionary than PCI was back in 1992, when it began pushing out ISA.
Like other emerging PC technologies, the PCI Express architecture ditches a wide parallel bus (which requires complex and expensive electrical paths) in favor of a serial bus that can scale to higher speeds with far fewer wires. When configured in a standard desktop PC, PCI Express will use an x1 interfacea 1 bit connector about an inch and a half long that can transfer roughly 500MB/s versus PCIs puny 133MB/s.
More bandwidth can be added by increasing the size of the connectors and using additional lanes. For example, a PCI Express for Graphics is an extension of the basic spec, and requires that graphics cards use an x16 connector (and a 16-bit lane). After overhead is factored out, the new generation of graphics BUS should support about 4GB/s in each directionroughly 4 times the speed of AGP 8x. Intel, one of the main proponents of the spec, says PCI Express for Graphics should offer enough capacity to bring us to the gamers Holy Grail of photorealistic rendering, and beyond.
BUS traffic isnt the only problem the PCI Express for Graphics will try to solve. One current limitation of the AGP spec is the amount of power that can be delivered to the AGP slot. Most desktop motherboards deliver just 25 watts of power to the slot, and this can be problematic. Even the original Geforce card had difficulties when motherboards couldnt deliver consistent, sustained power, and current high-performance cards like the Radeon 9700 Pro and the Geforce FX 5800 Ultra require power from auxiliary connectors just to run.
The initial version of PCI Express for Graphics will supply 60 watts of power to the slot. PCI Express for Graphics cards will lean heavily on 12-volt power, so a redesign of power supplies may necessary. Of course, more power means more heat, so manufacturers will have to cope with cooling 60-watt videocards. The heatsinks used in current videocards would probably turn into sparklers under such stress, so its possible that ducting air directly from a PCs side panel may be necessary (at maximum) to keep our next-next-gen graphics chips cool.
So what will the new hardware look like? An initial proposal described a convenient, fully enclosed, hot swappable module design that would ditch the bare-edge connector were used to. The proposed modules would allow swapping parts without even powering down (USB Style). But the plan was scrapped, and desktop PCs will continue to employ the familiar edge connector formfactor. Notebooks, however, will turn to a novel approach called NewCard.
NewCards will plug directly into the PCI Express BUS, and are designed to replace the ubiquitous PC Cards currently in use. Because PC Cards can no longer be stacked in todays thinner notebooks, NewCard slots will be placed side by side. A single NewCard is about half the width of a PC Card. When used in the double-wide configuration, two NewCards will take the same space as a single PC Card. The new notebook standard will also reduce power requirements (and give us consumers a bit of a price break) because it does away with the need for a separate controller chip that PC Cards currently require.
While the Modular System for desktops was passed up, system builders and Intel still believe NewCard could be used to add peripherals to desktop systems
New BUS protocol will completely reinvent your motherboard
PCI Express appears ready to make its debuton schedulein Intels upcoming Grantsdale chipset later nest year. Formerly code-named 3GIO (For Third Generation I/O), PCI Express will smash current bandwidth and power-supply bottlenecks, and send AGP, PCI, and PC Cards the way of the dodo. Its a good thing that PCI Express is ready to roll, because Grantsdale chipset is being readied to support Tejas, a truly new core processor architecture that some are already nicknaming Pentium 5. Tejas is competing for the title of Pentium 5 with the new Prescott core, which is going to be based on the .09nm process, .04nm smaller than the current P5, which is already heading towards the .05nm process, making transistors smaller than the influenza virus. Predictions for 2010 say that equivilant processors like the Pentium 4 could reach upwards of 15GHz - 20GHZ+. The Prescott core is also going to double the present L2 cache from 512kb to 1MB, and make them run cooler than any other CPU to date. The main advantage the Tejas core will have though, is the PCI Express.
PCI Expresswhich is both a hardware interface standard and a transmission protocolis expected to endure on motherboards for the next 10 years or more. The key to this longevity will be unprecedented scalability. Thats right: Notebooks, desktops, workstations, and servers will all adopt the wondrously generous PCI Express. For this reason, the new I/O standard will be even more revolutionary than PCI was back in 1992, when it began pushing out ISA.
Like other emerging PC technologies, the PCI Express architecture ditches a wide parallel bus (which requires complex and expensive electrical paths) in favor of a serial bus that can scale to higher speeds with far fewer wires. When configured in a standard desktop PC, PCI Express will use an x1 interfacea 1 bit connector about an inch and a half long that can transfer roughly 500MB/s versus PCIs puny 133MB/s.
More bandwidth can be added by increasing the size of the connectors and using additional lanes. For example, a PCI Express for Graphics is an extension of the basic spec, and requires that graphics cards use an x16 connector (and a 16-bit lane). After overhead is factored out, the new generation of graphics BUS should support about 4GB/s in each directionroughly 4 times the speed of AGP 8x. Intel, one of the main proponents of the spec, says PCI Express for Graphics should offer enough capacity to bring us to the gamers Holy Grail of photorealistic rendering, and beyond.
BUS traffic isnt the only problem the PCI Express for Graphics will try to solve. One current limitation of the AGP spec is the amount of power that can be delivered to the AGP slot. Most desktop motherboards deliver just 25 watts of power to the slot, and this can be problematic. Even the original Geforce card had difficulties when motherboards couldnt deliver consistent, sustained power, and current high-performance cards like the Radeon 9700 Pro and the Geforce FX 5800 Ultra require power from auxiliary connectors just to run.
The initial version of PCI Express for Graphics will supply 60 watts of power to the slot. PCI Express for Graphics cards will lean heavily on 12-volt power, so a redesign of power supplies may necessary. Of course, more power means more heat, so manufacturers will have to cope with cooling 60-watt videocards. The heatsinks used in current videocards would probably turn into sparklers under such stress, so its possible that ducting air directly from a PCs side panel may be necessary (at maximum) to keep our next-next-gen graphics chips cool.
So what will the new hardware look like? An initial proposal described a convenient, fully enclosed, hot swappable module design that would ditch the bare-edge connector were used to. The proposed modules would allow swapping parts without even powering down (USB Style). But the plan was scrapped, and desktop PCs will continue to employ the familiar edge connector formfactor. Notebooks, however, will turn to a novel approach called NewCard.
NewCards will plug directly into the PCI Express BUS, and are designed to replace the ubiquitous PC Cards currently in use. Because PC Cards can no longer be stacked in todays thinner notebooks, NewCard slots will be placed side by side. A single NewCard is about half the width of a PC Card. When used in the double-wide configuration, two NewCards will take the same space as a single PC Card. The new notebook standard will also reduce power requirements (and give us consumers a bit of a price break) because it does away with the need for a separate controller chip that PC Cards currently require.
While the Modular System for desktops was passed up, system builders and Intel still believe NewCard could be used to add peripherals to desktop systems
