ALi - Still Alive and Kicking

After its lukewarm success with the ALiMAGiK1, ALi continues to roll out chipsets for both Intel and AMD platforms. At Computex, they showcased their new Pentium 4 and K8 chipsets, both of which feature the latest HyperTransport I/O technology.

The M1681 northbridge is made to support Intel Pentium 4 processors and is paired with the M1563. Linked together using the HyperTransport I/O technology, it is able to support up to more than 400 megabytes per second of simultaneous input and output bandwidth. The new M1681 northbridge has built-in support for both DDR and SDR DRAM. If this chipset is really working, we should be looking at the world's first chipset for the Pentium 4 supporting DDR 400 memory. Also supporting the latest AGP 8x interface, the new M1681 northbridge does look promising on paper. Let's see if ALi could deliver this ahead of their competitors.

ALi M1681/M1563 chipset solution for the Intel Pentium 4 platform.

On the other hand, the M1687 northbridge supporting the latest K8 AMD processor was also on display. Supporting the AMD K8 processor, the northbridge will support the latest AGP 8x interface. The M1687 will also be paired with the M1563 southbridge.

The ALi M1687/M1563 chipset solution for the AMD K8 platform.

The M1563 southbridge comes with a HyperTransport link which makes it highly flexible to be paired with any HyperTransport capable northbridges like the M1681 and M1687. The M1563 has full support for :-

up to 6 PCI masters

one EHCI USB 2.0 host controller

three OHCI USB 1.1 controller

Ultra DMA Mode Transfers up to Mode 6 (100/133 Mbytes/sec)

6 audio playback channels

10/100 Mbps Medium Access Control (MAC) controller

An Acer notebook which uses ALi's Aladdin-P4 mobile chipset solution.

HP's Omnibook VT6200 also uses ALi's M1671 northbridge for the Pentium 4 platform.