Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2000/03/29/bitter_war_breaks_out_inside/

Bitter war breaks out inside Intel

Battle of the Boards spawns huge heap of codenames

By Mike Magee

Posted in On-Prem, 29th March 2000 10:42 GMT

The motherboard and server division at Intel is at loggerheads with the chipset division, a source inside the 70,000-employee company has revealed. That has led to a mass of mobos that will be released during the course of this year and next, many of which will not use Intel chipset technology. The source, who works within OPSD (the OEM platform solutions division), told The Register today that staff are "truly disgusted" with the response Intel's chipset division has given it. He said: "That is why the three server boards based on the 820 and 840 chipsets were cancelled, along with a few desktop boards. The decision to go with non-Intel chipsets for server boards was partly technical - they really are superior chipsets - and partly politics." New boards coming from Intel are the S440GE2 (aka Glen Echo or Lancewood 2) and the L440GX-2 (aka Ginko). The latter may officially be called either the SG2 or SGN2. Tupelo, meanwhile, is likely to be named the ST2 or STP2. The Glen Echo is a Lancewood (L440GX+) with enhanced Coppermine support plus Adaptec Ultra160 and SISL (Zero channel RAID) support. The SISL zero channel replaces Adaptec's ARO RAIDPort zero channel solution. It will be available in mid Q2 to early Q3. According to the mole, this is being rushed out before Intel effectively kills Slot One processors. Our information is that the Ginko and Tupelo are vastly different than the boards they are meant to replace: the Pine and the Hemlock. Although they are based on the same design, both will have dual Flip-Chip support, true PC-133 memory support (up to 4GB), with the Ginko having hardware ATA-100 RAID, and the Tupelo having dual Ultra-160 SCSI. They will both have 64-bit, 66MHz PCI, Integrated 4MB video and integrated 100Base-T LAN. The Tupelo will have a second 100Base-T NIC (network interface card) and both will both use RCC's (now Serverworks) LE3 chipset. Although these two boards are tentatively scheduled for release in early Q1 2001, they could arrive later on this year. There will be no replacement in the dual-Xeon space as the C440GX+ will not be updated to support Cascades processors. Server boards have also been modified to use non-Intel chipsets. The Juniper board will arrive soon after the Tupelo and Ginko. The Juniper will be a dual-processor Foster server running on ServerWorks' GC Chipset, while the Shasta, a four-way Foster will arrive around a quarter later, using the same chipset. The Acacia S460AC4 board will only be sold as part of a complete system, called Lion, and will be a four-way Itanium box using the Intel 460GX chipset. It is scheduled to appear in the third quarter. Intel is also readying a Cascades upgrade for its Saber technology, with an OCPRF100 eight-way system arriving probaly in August. This is codenamed the Palmetto (SRPM8) has many features of the Saber, but with new processor riser cards for the Cascades processors, and a new back end board supporting PCI-X cards, instead of just PCI-64. Later today, we will outline Intel's desktop plans for the course of this year. ® Intel Server Board strategy to 2002 Page 1 Brace, brace! It's codename conundrums Page 2 Classy chassis, Glen Echo and Raid options Page 3 End of lines, dates, closures and $1.5 million in dosh