DFI 748-AL: First Look at SiS 748

SiS 748/963L Chipset

The SiS 748/963L chipset is the latest in the SiS 700 series chipsets for AMD Athlon processors. 748 adds full support for the latest 200FSB Athlon CPUs, such as the Barton 3200+. The 748 chipset also features technology, called “Hyperstreaming Engine”, which SiS claims makes their Single-Channel Memory solution as fast as Dual-Channel Athlon solutions.

Click image to view a larger picture.

Hyperstreaming uses a number of techniques to manage data flow through the entire computer – all designed with the goal of reducing wait states and improving performance of the computer system. Hyperstreaming Engine optimizes performance using these techniques:

1. Low Latency with single stream
2. Pipelining and Concurrent Execution with Multiple streams
3. “Prioritized Channel” with Specific stream
4. “Smart flow control” and “Intelligent arbitration” with Smart stream

You can read more about the SiS Hyperstreaming Engine at www.sis.com/hyperstreaming/index.htm. Sis also includes a number of charts, comparing the Hyperstreaming Engine to “V Corporation” and “N Corporation”. All of the combined Hyperstreaming features are designed to remove data bottlenecks and to improve I/O intensive operations, like copying and downloading files from the internet.

The other innovation in the 748/963L chipset is the 1GHz “Mutiol” bus used to communicate between the north and south bridges. This should also improve performance of the chipset.