14 DAY TRIAL // As the launch date of Intel's next-generation Core i7 processors is approaching fast, more and more eyes turn towards the giant chip manufacturer and its roadmap for future products. November will bring us three new chips from Intel, all based on the Nehalem architecture, and they will go hand in hand with the P45 chipset.
For the next year, as we already know, Intel has in store more Nehalem-based processors, and two of them will be Lynnfield and Havendale, which are paired with the chipmaker's Ibex Peak. Intel revealed the fact that Ibex Peak would be named P55, and that it would come in the third quarter of the next year. P55 will also bring a lot of innovation and it will be pin capable to other five series chipset. Basically, this would mean multiple chipset support for a single PCB if the manufacturer wants to make it so.
The most interesting fact about P55 is that it is a single chip design, eliminating the ICH chips. A similar single chip design is also featured by the recently launched MCP7A from Nvidia, of which we presented details a few times before. Intel's up-coming design is a novelty for the mainstream-performance market, and people hope for it to live up to expectations.
The main features of Ibex Peak include the LGA 1160 socket, with support for Lynnfield and Havendale, support for dual graphics cards 2×8PCIe 2.0 or one card on the 1x16PCIe 2.0 configuration, integrated USB Rate Match Hub, which provides support for as much as 14 USB 2.0 slots, as well as 6xSATA 3.0Gb/s with Intel Matrix Storage Technology 9.0. P55 will also support RAID 0/1/5/10 setups.
What is still uncertain about Ibex Peak is whether it will feature USB 3.0 support. Even without it, P55 will come as a next-generation product. It may go against Intel's P45, yet it will be three quarters from now, and we may see some changes in the meantime.