Intel's next-generation Pentium 4 desktop chipsets, 'Glenwood' and 'Lakeport', will support Serial ATA 2, 667MHz DDR 2 and a 1066MHz frontside bus clock frequency, according to Taiwanese motherboard-maker sources of DigiTimes.

Glenwood and Lakeport are the successors to today's 925- and 915-series chipsets, and are believed to carry the official designations 955 and 945, respectively. Both are likely to be pitched at Intel's first dual-core desktop P4, 'Smithfield, which is due to ship mid-2005.

The 955 and 945 chipsets are said to provide four SATA 2 ports, Matrix RAID, Hi-Def audio. They are expected to form that basis for Intel's 'East Fork' - its desktop home entertainment PC platform, and a bid to do for desktops what Centrino did for notebooks.

The LGA-775 chipsets are also likely to support the upcoming 600-series of single-core P4s, which sources suggest have begun to appear at mobo makers' premises in sample quantities. The P4 630, 640, 650 and 660 are expected to appear during the current quarter, backed by on today's 915 chipset family.

The 600-series will feature Intel's AMD64-like 64-bit memory addressing system, EM64, along with 2MB of on-die L2 cache, Execution Disable Bit (EDB) support and the latest version of SpeedStep.

Meanwhile, Intel is said to be preparing updated versions of its 915P and 915G chipsets, issuing a new core stepping for its ICH6 South Bridge component. The new core, C0, reportedly improves USB and Serial ATA data transmission stability.

The chip maker is expected to introduce a pair of new low-end 915-series chipsets this month in a bid to drive customers away from Socket 478 processors to the more recent LGA-775 interface. ®

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