ULI chipset roadmap update

ULI is gearing up to introduce quite a number of chipset solutions by the end of this year through to 2006. Starting off with its north bridges for Intel's platform, ULI will be phasing out all AGP support in favor of PCIe. ULI's m1683 chipset marks its last AGP.

Coming in 2006, ULI will be introducing chipsets that will be supporting dual DDR2 memory configurations running at 800MHz and higher, which indicates that memory technology progress from manufacturers are going along steadily.

On the south bridge side of things, ULI has been very active. The end of 2005 will have ULI introducing solutions that support Serial ATA 2, RAID 5 support and HD audio. Surprisingly, of we take a look at the detailed specs of ULI's M1575 PCIe chipset, we'll notice something very interesting:

ULI Core Logic Features
M1691 (NB)	M1575 (SB)	M1577 (SB)	M1697 (K8 SB)
PCIe I/F to SB	PCIe I/F to NB	PCIe I/F to NB	HT I/F to K8
PCIe (2) x1	-	PCIe (2) x1	PCIe (2) x1
PCIe (1) x16	-	-	PCIe (1) x16, (2) x8
	(8) USB 2.0/1.1	(8) USB 2.0/1.1	(8) USB 2.0/1.1
	(4) SATA 3.0Gbps	(4) SATA 3.0Gbps	(4) SATA 3.0Gbps
	(2) PATA ATA133	(2) PATA ATA133	(2) PATA ATA133
	RAID 0, 1, 0+1	RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5	RAID 0, 1, 0+1
	10/100Mbps MAC	10/100/1000Mbps MAC	10/100Mbps MAC
	HD-Audio / AC'97 Audio	HD-Audio / AC'97 Audio	HD-Audio / AC'97 Audio
	TPM 1.2 Interface	TPM 1.2 Interface	TPM 1.2 Interface
	Pin-to-Pin compatible with M1573	Pin-to-Pin compatible with M1573

ULI appears to be introducing TPM (trusted platform module) technology -- the same technology required by Apple's OS X for x86 -- throughout most of its latest and upcoming chipsets. TPM technology helps software authenticate the system to ensure that the system is indeed authorized to be running the software or authorized to install the software.

HD-Audio is also becoming more mainstream thanks to industry wide pushing from Intel. Users will be able to enjoy high fidelity (multi-channel and higher sampling frequencies and bit rates like 24-bit/96kHz). Think of HD-Audio along the same lines as NVIDIA's original SoundStorm products minus the Dolby Digital live encoding. We spoke to Intel and asked them about HD-Audio and they indicated to us that while they have defined a minimum specification for motherboard manufacturers to follow, they are free to add higher quality components to boards for even better sound quality.

As far as AMD solutions go, ULI will be introducing the M1697 single-chipset solution which supports all the technologies in the M1575, including TPM 1.2. With the M1697 south bridge being newer than the M1577, we're slightly disappointed not to see a hardware RAID solution being implemented. The M1697 comes with a myriad of PCIe slot options but lacks support for two x16 slots. Those looking to build a tightly budgeted SLI system will have to look elsewhere for support.

ULI focuses very much on the value oriented market and thus many of their latest south bridges such as the M1691, M1575 are either low pin-count or pin for pin compatible with previous chips. This design reduces development time as well as manufacturing costs.