The Blackford Northbridge Chipset for the Intel 5000

Author

Radhakrishnan, Sivakumar ; Chinthamani, Sundaram ; Cheng, Kai

Volume

27

Issue

2

fYear

2007

Firstpage

22

Lastpage

33

Abstract

The Intel 5000 is a shared-memory, symmetric dual-processor system based on the energy-efficient, high-performance Intel core 2 dual- and quad-core processors. A key component is the northbridge, which interconnects processor, memory, and I/O interfaces. The Blackford northbridge chipset provides multicore processor support and platform-level features and technologies. In this article, we describe the Intel 5000 component architecture, focusing on the BNB chipset and its main interfaces. We also describe the chipset´s key innovations, which help define new standards of function, performance, and feature set in the dual-processor segment.

Keywords

microprocessor chips; peripheral interfaces; shared memory systems; BNB chipset; Blackford northbridge chipset; I/O interfaces; Intel 5000 shared-memory symmetric dual-processor system; Intel Core 2 quad-core processors; Computer aided manufacturing; Computer architecture; File servers; High performance computing; Integrated circuit interconnections; Microprocessors; Multicore processing; Power system reliability; Secure storage; Web server; FB-DIMM memory technology; I/O bridges; dual-processor system; low-power design; northbridge chipset; platform architecture; shared memory;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Micro, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0272-1732

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MM.2007.44

Filename

4287393