64-bit Xeon MP and Intel E8500 Chipset
Intel E8500 Chipset
Contents
Let’s talk now about the new Intel E8500 chipset and its new features.
This chipset has the following basic specs:
- PCI Express bus support (three 8x slots and one 4x slot).
- PCI-X bus support (one PCI-X 133 slot and two PCI-X 100 slots).
- Four memory channels, allowing a maximum theoretical transfer rate of 12,800 MB/s using DDR2-400 memories.
- DDR266, DDR333 and DDR2-400 memories support (pay attention because this chipset doesn’t support DDR400 memories but DDR2-400).
- Supports dual-core Xeon CPUs (code-named Paxville).
- Two independent busses. At the previous chipset for Xeon MP (Intel E8870) all system processors shared the same 400 MHz (3.2 GB/s) bus. In this chipset we have two independent busses of 667 MHz (5.3 GB/s) each, thus it is said that servers based on this CPU has an external maximum theoretical transfer rate of 10.6 GB/s. If two processors are used, each processor will be installed on a separated bus. If a four-CPU configuration is used, each bus will have two CPUs installed.
Figure 3: Intel E8500 chipset dual bus architecture.
Figure 4: Intel E8500 chipset summary and comparison with a ServerWorks GC-HE chipset solution.
