AMD's SB800 Is a Completely New Southbridge

As we have already presented to you yesterday, details about AMD's chipset roadmap for 2009 have been found loose on the web. But because such information tends to come in bits and pieces, today we found another set of details regarding AMD's future chipsets and this time we get to take a more thorough look at the SB800-series.

Thanks to ChileHardware, which has posted another slide from AMD's chipset roadmap, we can now bring more info on Advanced Micro Devices' next-generation Southbridge. And it looks like we are talking about more than just one version of AMD's future SB800, although there are no details regarding these various models.

As compared to AMD's current Southbridge offer, the SB800 is a whole new ball game. It will feature a faster chipset interconnect that will be dubbed A Link Express 3.0 and will use four 5GHz PCIe lanes instead of the four 2.5GHz PCIe lanes that can currently be found on AMD's SB700/750. The SB800 will also be the first AMD Southbridge to feature a PCIe interface, as compared to previous models which had to rely on the Northbridge for all PCIe connectivity.

Other features include an integrated Gigabit Ethernet MAC and optional support for up to 6GB/s SATA and AHCI 1.2 with FIS based switching. The new Southbridge will also increase the number of available USB 2.0 ports, from 12 to 14 with AMD even adding a third EHCI USB controller. According to the posted slide, AMD will also add support for an integrated clock, embedded I/O controllers and an improved hardware monitor system, with support for up to 5 fan controllers.

From what we can see from the SB800 details, AMD has a real chance of beating Intel's chipset offer. But until Q2 of 2009, when the SB800 is expected to be released, these are just pure speculations.