Intel Intel(R) 100 Series/c230 Series Chipset Family Pmc - A121

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Intel's 100-series chipsets: DDR4, PCIe 3.0 SSDs, and other Skylake supplements

Next-gen chips can (sometimes) come up with side by side-gen RAM and insanely fast storage.

• A high-level overview of the CPU, the chipset, and all the stuff they connect to.

  Intel

• Intel is launching two Skylake CPUs today, loftier-end overclockable parts in the Core i5 and i7 families.

• Simply K-series CPUs matched with the Z170 chipset are going to exist able to overclock, and information technology looks like it volition be more granular than earlier.

  Intel

• An overview of features new to the Skylake family unit.

  Intel

• We'll get more at IDF, followed by a bigger launch later in the twelvemonth.

  Intel

Now that Broadwell's protracted, awkward launch is complete, the company would like you to plough your attention to yet some other new architecture that'southward right around the corner: Skylake. Intel insisted that the problems with the new 14nm manufacturing process that so delayed Broadwell wouldn't affect Skylake, and it appears to be holding to that hope fifty-fifty though information technology makes some of the Broadwell CPUs expect more than a niggling pointless.

Today the visitor is releasing simply a distill of Skylake information centered effectually a few specific products: the high-end overclockable Core i7-6700K and i5-6600K, and the accompanying overclocker-friendly Z170 chipset. We've got some performance numbers for the CPU and its new integrated Intel HD 530 GPU over here (afterwards a few years of four-digit model numbers for GPUs, it looks similar Intel is switching to a 3-digit system in Skylake). Here, nosotros'll focus primarily on an overview of the Z170 chipset and the DDR4 memory controller included in the Skylake CPUs, since they have important implications for storage and integrated graphics speed.

Know your codenames
Codename and twelvemonth	Process	Prominent consumer CPU branding	Tick/tock
Westmere (2010)	32nm	Core i3/i5/i7	Tick (new procedure)
Sandy Span (2011)	32nm	Second-generation Core i3/i5/i7	Tock (new architecture)
Ivy Span (2012)	22nm	Third-generation Core i3/i5/i7	Tick
Haswell (2013)	22nm	Quaternary-generation Core i3/i5/i7	Tock
Broadwell (2014/2015)	14nm	Fifth-generation Core i3/i5/i7, Core Grand	Tick
Skylake (2015)	14nm	Sixth-generation Cadre i3/i5/i7, Core M	Tock
Kaby Lake (2016)	14nm	TBA	Neither tick nor tock
Cannonlake (2017?)	10nm	TBA	Tick

Intel will exist doing a full Skylake architecture disclosure at the Intel Developers Forum later this month, and both Peter Vivid and I will be there to go all the details—expect more than about the full range of Skylake processors then, and look forward to at to the lowest degree a partial launch of Skylake at some point in Q3 of 2015.

DDR4

To head some of y'all off at the laissez passer, no, DDR4 support isn't technically a feature of the 100-serial chipsets themselves; memory controllers in mainstream CPUs were moved from the chipset to the main CPU die years ago to reduce latency. RAM back up nevertheless feels like a chipset-side by side topic, though, so we'll talk virtually it here for a bit.

DDR4 follows the same trends set up by DDR2 and DDR3: lower ability usage (1.2V, down from i.5 or ane.35V for DDR3), higher data transfer rates, and marginally higher CAS latency. DDR4 also promises greater density, meaning we could soon come across college memory capacities crammed onto a unmarried DIMM—3rd-political party PC makers advertising Skylake desktops say that the chips support up to 64GB of RAM, up from 32GB with Haswell and Broadwell.

Skylake'due south retention controller can support either 1600MHz DDR3L or 2133MHz DDR4, but since the two memory standards use unlike slots it's likely that most motherboards and PCs will either support one or the other.

The retentivity manufacturers take been making DDR4 parts for a while, simply and so far they've been limited to use in servers and high-end workstations. Since information technology's still less commonly used than DDR3, it tends to exist more expensive as of this writing—a glance at Newegg says that 16GB of 1600MHz DDR3 (two 8GB DIMMs) starts at around $75 or $eighty while the same amount of 2133MHz DDR4 costs between $100 and $110. Every bit DDR4 becomes more widely used, RAM makers volition increase their production and bulldoze downwardly prices, just as they did when DDR2 and DDR3 went mainstream.

We'd look DDR4 to be the virtually important to users of Intel's integrated GPUs, which answer well to increases in memory bandwidth. A scattering of Broadwell CPUs supported 1866MHz DDR3 instead of the standard 1600MHz; that pocket-size bump in memory speed improved graphics operation by effectually ten percent.

PCI Express 3.0, and what information technology ways for SSDs

Like the 9-series chipsets, the Z170 supports storage connected via PCI Express rather than the older, slower SATA interface. The deviation is that The Z170 includes PCI Express 3.0 lanes instead of PCI Express 2.0 lanes.

Up until now, Intel's chipsets have topped out at PCI Express 2.0. Its college-end (normally quad-cadre) platforms supported PCI Express iii.0, but that was because Intel built PCIe 3.0 lanes directly into those processors for utilise with high-stop video cards. Ivy Bridge was the beginning architecture to include this feature, simply Haswell and Broadwell did it this style besides. And high-finish Skylake CPUs like the ones launching today continue to include 16 of those PCIe three.0 lanes for use primarily with graphics cards—you can use one card with 16 lanes, ii cards with viii lanes, or three cards by giving one bill of fare eight lanes and the other two cards four lanes.

For a long time, skipping PCIe 3.0 in the chipset was fine. The other things that you would connect to a chipset—Ethernet and wireless controllers, Idiot box tuner cards, external sound cards, and other peripherals—didn't need more bandwidth. Solid-state hard drives take changed that, and as they've improved they've continued to suck downward every chip of bandwidth we can give them.

So far, the only OEM shipping an SSD connected to PCI Express 3.0 is Apple, who presumably used some of the processor lanes for the SSD in the otherwise underwhelming 2015 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro refresh. Here's a nautical chart from that review—compare the read speeds of the 13-inch model, which uses 4 PCIe two.0 lanes, to the PCIe iii.0 lanes in the fifteen-inch model (the write speeds in the 13-inch model are lower in part because it'south a lower-capacity drive; 256GB and 512GB drives tend to have better write functioning since the controller can write to more than NAND chips at one time).

Enlarge / Remember, the 128GB and 256GB drives may not perform as well as 512GB or 1TB options. Read operation is more often than not pretty consequent across multiple capacities, while write capacities usually benefit more from having more NAND chips to write to at once.

PCI Express 3.0 is theoretically twice every bit fast equally 2.0, and while the new fifteen-inch rMBP doesn't quite get there, it's non too far off. Now imagine this every bit a standard option on high-finish PCs. If yous're using a SATA Iii SSD right now, the potential speed increment will be ridiculous. But proceed in mind that not all of the 100-series chipsets may include PCIe iii.0 lanes.

Other chipset features, and the balance of the family

• Leaked 100-series chipset family features.

• Part 2.

For this section, nosotros'll supplement Intel's official information with a few leaked slides from reasonably reliable sources. Those slides suggest that in that location will be a total of six 100-series desktop chipsets, with Z170 sitting on the top of the pile. These chipsets replace the total range of offerings from both the 8- and 9-serial chipset families—the 9-series chipsets were intended mainly for enthusiasts, and Haswell'south long life (and the express desktop Broadwell rollout) let Intel use the eight-series chipsets to fill other market gaps. Every bit with Intel'southward CPU lineup, the list of chipsets is segmented and needlessly convoluted, and there are enough of differences y'all demand to exist aware of.

Of those half-dozen chipsets, five include PCI Express 3.0 lanes. Of those v, 3 chipsets include enough lanes to back up multiple SSDs: The overclocker-targeted Z170 and the business-and-workstation-focused Q170 can each support upward to three drives since they include 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes, while the more mainstream H170 and its 16 lanes tin support two drives.

The B150 and Q150, more mainstream business-and-workstation-level chipsets, include viii and 10 PCIe three.0 lanes (respectively) but they appear to be reserved for other peripherals. The depression-finish H110 simply includes six PCI Express ii.0 lanes, the aforementioned number as the H81 chipset it replaces.

The H170, Z170, and Q170 chipsets are the only ones that support RAID and the Smart Response Technology feature, which lets you use a smaller SSD to speed up a larger HDD. The concluding major difference, excepting enterprise-level features like vPro, is the number of USB ports each chipset supports. Z170 and Q170 back up a total of 14 USB ports, and as many as ten can be USB 3.0. H170 and Q150 also support a total of 14 ports, simply only eight can be USB 3.0. B150 supports 12 ports and six USB three.0 ports, and H110 supports 10 ports and four USB 3.0 ports.

The big chipset-related question that remains is which of these features will go far into the mobile versions of the Skylake chipsets, the ones that are integrated into the low-voltage Y- and U-series processors. Hopefully this data is included along with the rest of the architectural data revealed at IDF in a couple of weeks.

Listing image by Intel

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Source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/intels-100-series-chipsets-ddr4-pcie-3-0-ssds-and-other-skylake-supplements/

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