According to several Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, Intel's forthcoming Ibex Peak will not only be introduced on the P55 chipset, but will be spanned across five individual mainstream and entry-level chipsets for its 45nm Lynnfield and Havendale processors. The entire lineup will include the mainstream P55 and H55 as well as the high-end H57, P57, and Q57 which will all launch in Q1 2010 while the P55 exclusively launches in Q3 later this year.
One of the major highlights of the three high-end chipsets will be the introduction of a new technology known as Braidwood. In short terms, it is basically a revision of Intel's Turbo Memory which was first seen on the Santa Rosa mobile Centrino platform in May 2007 and later in its second revision on the Montevina platform in July 2008.
The technology attempts to decrease hard drive usage by moving frequently accessed data over to flash memory which ultimately allows for faster boot times and more power efficiency. This time, however, the memory chips will also feature a dedicated NVRAM controller to the system and storage buffers to allow for read and write speeds available only on solid state disks.
On another note, Intel has decided that it will not extend all Ibex Peak features to every chipset. Instead, the chipsets will be allowed different capabilities according to their respective market segments. For instance, the Lynnfield P55 and P57 will offer dual PCI-Express 2.0 x8 slots for CrossFire and SLI but will lack support for the Flexible Display Interface (FDI), which routes GPU-specific data to Ibex Peak's display controllers. In contrast, the Q57, H57, and H55 will be the only ones to support FDI but will only have single PCI-Express 2.0 x8 slots.
Intel's Q57 chipset, codenamed Piketon will specifically target business applications by being the only chipset to support Active Management Technology 6.0. Additionally, it will feature an Anti-Theft technology and will share a Remote PC Assist capability with its Havendale H57 counterpart. Similarly, P57 will exclusively feature a technology known as Coral Harbor which provides the same functionality as AMT but with slight differences.
According to a recent chart from HKEPC Hardware, all five chipsets will feature up to fourteen USB 2.0 slots, up to eight PCI-E x1 slots, up to six SATA ports with RAID, and up to four legacy PCI slots with the H55 being an exception of up to twelve USB 2.0 and six PCI-E x1 slots respectively. Furthermore, Intel has also decided to natively support HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort connectivity to allow for seamless video interface compatibility.
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