Future Intel Chipset to Feature WLAN Controllers and USB 3.1

[btarunr]

The 7th generation Core "Kaby Lake" processor, and its companion 200-series chipset are almost upon us, with the company planning to launch them this 2017 International CES (early January). It looks like the 200-series chipset is turning out to be what the 9-series chipset was to the 8-series; with a handful new features, but nothing extraordinary. Current 100-series chipset motherboards are already receiving BIOS updates from manufacturers to make them support the new processors. It looks like the succeeding 300-series chipset, which Intel plans towards the end of 2017, could stand out.

Intel is reportedly equipping the 300-series chipset with wireless networking becoming part of the feature-set. This means at least some variants of the chipset could feature native WLAN controllers (likely with external PHY for signal clarity). The company is also planning to implement native 10 Gb/s USB 3.1 (gen 2.0) controllers into the chipset. This decision could impact third-party WLAN and USB 3.1 controller manufacturers, observes DigiTimes.



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[Prima.Vera]

Any performance improvements rumors for the 300 series??

 

[hojnikb]

How about ditching entirely the whole chipset thing and just put everything to the cpu.

 

[Rothbardian]

How about ditching entirely the whole chipset thing and just put everything to the cpu.

That's exactly what AMD is doing with Zen

 

[Easy Rhino]

How about ditching entirely the whole chipset thing and just put everything to the cpu.

chipsets give vendors more options.

 

[hojnikb]

chipsets give vendors more options.

They could integrate the whole feature set on to the cpu itself and it would be up to oems to enable them

 

[Cybrnook2002]

Great, because we all know Intel WIFI today is just about the best you can get. No driver issues there........

 

[The Von Matrices]

I thought that 10gb/s USB needs the traces on the PCB to be very short to maintain signal integrity, hence the lack of front 10gb/s ports. The chipset isn't really in an optimal location for short signal traces. Could Intel have solved this?

 

[Shihab]

How about ditching entirely the whole chipset thing and just put everything to the cpu.

Unless there are significant performance gains, I'd rather keep them apart. The more modular the system is, the easier and cheaper it would be to fix.
Sides, most of the NB's already integrated in the CPUs. Any more than that and we might as well be calling them SoCs!

 

[crsh1976]

Wasn't USB 3.1 support supposed to be part of the 200 series? Intel is quietly pushing it to the next iteration again?

 

[FYFI13]

They could integrate the whole feature set on to the cpu itself and it would be up to oems to enable them

This would increase price of low-end CPU's. Total waste of resources.

 

[Mussels]

built in wifi makes more sense now, with all these ridiculous high bandwidth options coming out.