With Intel's LGA-1156 Ibex-Peak platform weeks away from launch, like most major motherboard vendors, Biostar its compatible motherboard lineup ready, top to bottom. The company has at least three motherboards based on the Intel P55 chipset for the first wave, two in its mid-range T-Series, and one high-end T-Power series. The lineup starts with the T-Series T5 XE, continues with T-Series TP55 XE, and ends with the T-Power I55.

The T-Series T5 XE is a low-frills model that relies on the chipset's stock feature-set for the most part. The CPU is powered by a 4+2 phase power circuit, and the memory by a 2-phase circuit. The expansion slots are standard issue, two PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots that are electrically x8 when both are populated with video cards, two each of PCI-E x1 and legacy PCI, six SATA II ports routed to the chipset, an additional controller driving the IDE, one gigabit Ethernet connection, and 8-channel audio. Simple anodized aluminum heatsinks cool the chipset and a portion of the board's VRM area.

On the course of coming up with mainstream derivatives of the Nehalem architecture, for Intel, there seems to be a big deal of uncertainty surrounding the dual-core parts. Havendale (desktop) and Auburndale (notebook) were stated by initial company road-maps as the company's dual-core chips. Later, news emerged of Intel reportedly scrapping both chips to find a 32 nm replacement in another chip codenamed Arrandale. In the latest company-slide exposé by VR-Zone, details emerge of yet another iteration to Intel's plans: Clarkdale. Correct spelling is Clarkdale and Arrandale by the way (not Clarksdale or Arandale).

While it is unclear at this point, if this chip, like the Arrandale (32 nm CPU + 32 nm IGP), is built to be deployed on both desktop and mobile platforms, the reason behind its development gains clarity. The Ibex-Peak platform design by Intel, be it dual-core or quad-core, consists of a standard multi-chip module (MCM)-based design, where two dice populate a package: the central processor, and the northbridge. The design gives the company flexibility by introducing a degree of modularity. After scrapping plans of a full-on processor built on the 45 nm high-K manufacturing process, Intel seems to have realised that its foundries won't be able to cater to many designs based on the 32 nm process initially, at once. Taking advantage of the MCM design, Intel is working on this new chip: Clarkdale, which consists of the processor die built on the 32 nm second-generation high-K process, with the northbridge being built on the existing 45 nm process. This design helps evade the manufacturing constraints Intel might have initially. The northbridge die will feature an integrated graphics processor that connects to its output using the flexible-display interface. With this, Intel is looking to bring in immediate and cost-cutting to the extant feasible.

Intel's mainstream market implementation of the Nehalem architecture will come in the form of monolithic quad-core a dual-core chips that have northbridge machinery integrated. Based on the Lynnfield (quad-core) and Arandale (dual-core) designs, Intel will place the processors on a common system design dubbed the "Ibex-Peak". The processors are likely to be branded as Core i5, Core i4 or even Core i3 depending on a lot of factors. Additionally, Intel plans enterprise variants of the said chips.

To seat these chips, Intel is designing new sockets: LGA-1155, LGA-1156 the two can be classified into the sockets for the desktop variants, with another LGA-1167 socket most likely to be exclusive for the Xeon variants. PCGH sourced some images from Intel's Design Development Tools (DDT) portal (found here), which tell that Intel names its new series of sockets as "socket H". Pictured below is a processor package viewed from its business-end. The other three you can see, are interposer-boards. These are devices that resemble the actual product packages that sit on the sockets. You can see a grid of leads over the "IHS" of the package. The leads serve to help in the technical development of products based on the package design, hence it is found on the DDT portal. It should give you an idea of what an LGA-1155, LGA-1156 and LGA-1167 processor should look like, sans the leads on the IHS. The images below in the same order. Finally, pictured much earlier, is the Ibex-Peak platform motherboard that demonstrates the design.

Intel pushed its performance supremacy lead further up with the introduction of the Nehalem micro-architecture. The introduction served as a milestone event in the company's history, where it sought to rearrange various components of the PC, by moving certain parts of the chipset to the processor package. In the months to come, with the introduction of the Ibex-Peak platform, the company hopes to migrate even more components from the system core-logic to the CPU package. A lot of engineering potential is unlocked due to the modularity of the various components of a Nehalem-derived CPU.

At the upcoming International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) event, Intel plans a decent set of technology demonstrations and papers. The advance program information document shed some light on Intel's itinerary. In session 3 held on February 9, Intel will present papers on its 8-core Xeon processor, following which is a session on 45nm IA processors. The session is on processors built with features characteristic of the Nehalem micro-architecture, in having integrated memory controllers, a coherent point-to-point interconnect, and up to 8 processing cores. Interestingly, the description included a note on the power consumptions, ranging from "sub-10W to 130W", which leads us to believe Intel to have plans on making derivatives of the Nehalem micro-architecture with some very low energy footprints. Another interpretation would be that a new breed of processors could have idle power consumptions as low as <10W. Currently the most energy-efficient Nehalem-based processor known to be in the works is the Xeon L5520 that has identical features to those of the Core i7 series while having a clock speed of 2.23 GHz and a rated TDP of a mere 60W.

Now faced with delays, Intel's upcoming Ibex-Peak platform, a next-generation mainstream implementation of the Nehalem architecture, is an interesting mix of technologies, where Intel seeks to minimise the platform and energy footprints while delivering value and performance through a clever bit of rearrangement of system components. HKEPC has learned that Intel's 5-Series mainstream chipsets consists of five models: P57, Q57, H57, P55, and H55. The P57 and P55 are built for the consumer PC with discrete graphics. The H57 and H55 chipsets are built for processors with integrated graphics, with support for the Intel FDI. The Q57 is built for the business / enterprise-client PC, it supports a host of exclusive Intel technologies that make the machine easier to manage.