ServerWorks Builds Server iAppliance Bridge

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(04/29/02, 12:09:38 PM EDT)

Santa Clara, Ca. -- ServerWorks Corp., a Broadcom company, has released to production on a sixth generation of its Champion South Bridge (CSB6) that extends the features of the SystemI/O core logic to server appliances that use Intel Xeon processors.

The CSB6 integrates support for the Nonvolatile RAM (NVRAM), LCD, Keypad and Watchdog timer interfaces specified by the Microsoft Server Appliance Kit (SAK) 2.0, and thus eliminates the need for discrete I/O components in cost-sensitive server appliance applications.

The CSB6 works with ServerWorks' Grand Champion North Bridges, including the GC-HE and the GC-LE, and provides more than two times the I/O bandwidth of ServerWorks' earlier South Bridge chip, the CSB5. Its 64-bit PCI bus transfers data at rates up to 266 Megabytes/second, compared with the 133 Megabytes/second rate possible with a 32-bit PCI bus. This gives the CSB6 more than enough capacity to handle the 125 Megabytes/second traffic generated by a Gigabit Ethernet port operating at full speed.

The new bridge also includes support for three ATA100 IDE channels, two that can be used for RAID 0, 1 or 5 arrangements, with a spare channel that can be used with CD-ROM or backup devices. To accommodate the increased I/O traffic passing through the bridge, the link that connects the CSB6 to the Grand Champion North Bridge operates at 400 Megabytes/second, twice as fast as the link used with the earlier CSB5.

The enhanced performance and features of the CSB6 allow system OEMs to create low-cost server and server appliance configurations with RAID, using only two chips: a North Bridge and a South Bridge. This eliminates additional I/O bridges or bus controllers that clutter the system board and add to the system's bill of materials cost.

The Champion South Bridge 6 (CSB6) is now available in volume quantities. It is compatible with the ServerWorks' GC-HE and GC-LE SystemI/O core logic chipsets ServerWorks introduced earlier this year. For more information, go to http://www.serverworks.com.