38 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|DEC 08 |www.maximumpc.com
Motherboard Chipsets
Bye bye, north bridge
Hard Drives
Perpendicular and patterned-recording technologies will face off
It used to be that the CPU north bridge was the star of
the core-logic chipset world. With its jurisdiction over
RAM, the north bridge’s speed had a signifi cant impact
on performance.
But with AMD and now Intel integrating the memory
controller into the CPU, the north bridge’s importance just
got a whole lot smaller. That’s not to say it doesn’t still have
some use. The north bridge contains the circuitry connect-
ing the motherboard to the graphics cards, and the south
bridge as well; in integrated graphics boards, the north
bridge also contains a GPU core.
Next year, however, the north bridge’s role will be
further diminished. AMD is expected to integrate a GPU
into the core of its CPUs due next year, and Intel will move
graphics and direct-attach PCI-E into the CPU. That pretty
much means the end of the north bridge as we’ve known it
all these years.SLI FOR ALL
Next year, we’ll get something we’ve long pined for: the
ability to run both CrossFire and SLI on a motherboard
without the need for extra hardware. The change comesfrom Nvidia’s fl ip-fl op regarding SLI support on mother-
boards that use Intel’s X58 chipset. Originally, Nvidia said it
would allow SLI only if motherboard vendors integrated a
pricey and hot nForce 200 chip into the PCB to “enable” SLI.
When board vendors balked, Nvidia decided to enable SLI
on X58 boards the company has “certifi ed” for SLI use. The
company says that an nForce 200 chip is still recommended
for best performance in confi gs consisting of more than two
cards, but not required.END OF NFORCE?
With VIA offi cially calling it quits, Nvidia is the only third-
party chipset vendor still shooting live rounds. But what
about in 2009? On Intel, it’s open for debate. Nvidia has
said it believes it has a license to build chipsets for Core i7,
but Intel has said that’s not quite true. One thing is certain:
Nvidia will not have a chipset for the LGA1366-based Core
i7 CPU at all, but the company is planning one for LGA1066
CPUs when they’re released later next year. Unfortunately,
it’s not clear whether Nvidia can do this without a lawsuit
from Intel—and with graphics and PCI-E integration slated
for Intel’s LGA1066 CPUs, what would even be the point?Perpendicular recording has allowed industry giants to
push the bounds of drive capacities, with Seagate now
leading the pack at 1.5 terabytes. But that trend won’t last
forever. Hitachi offi cials believe they can take perpen-
dicular recording all the way up to an areal density of one
terabit per square inch—modern drives hover around
300 to 400Gb per square inch. But by 2010, new storage
technologies could take hold.
Most promising is patterned media recording. It allows
drive makers to overcome the thermal stability issues that
plague perpendicular recording. When a manufacturer
wants to increase the areal density of a drive, it shrinks
the small bits of magnetic material, or grains, on the drive’s
platter. The smaller these grains get in a perpendicular-
recording format, the more likely they are to become ther-
mally unstable—switching their magnetization spontane-
ously and, thus, scrambling the data they store.
Patterned media recording carves actual grooves
onto the platter in the form of tracks or individual bits.The latter can be thought of as a swarm of magnetic is-
lands. Each island stores a single bit of information that’s
represented by a number of grains magnetized in a par-
ticular direction. The size of these grains can be reduced,
and the overall areal density of the drive increased,
because the magnetic noise from each island of grains is
unable to aff ect others.
Hard drive manufacturers are considering two other
storage technologies that would similarly reduce the
thermal instabilities between grains. Thermally assisted
recording, or heat-assisted magnetic recording, increases
the stiff ness of the grains to prevent unintended mag-
netization. The drive head uses a miniscule near-fi eld
aperture laser to heat the grains. This allows their magne-
tization to be switched, representing a change in the data
bit. The same goes for the second storage technology:
microwave-assisted magnetic recording. Only in this
case, the laser is replaced by a small device that can emit
a radio frequency magnetic fi eld.Technology Watch List