GigaOM

Computex press room hit by Microsoft wormA virus crippled newsroom at Computex, the giant Taiwanese tradeshow’ which has made all the news so far, but it will soon be overshadowed by a new release from Intel, code named Grantsdale.

Grantsdale is a new chipset, which according to some analysts is a clean break from the past and is going to increase the performance of personal computers and servers many fold. Raymond James’ Ashok Kumar, believes that his is the “most radical platform change since the introduction of AGP in 1997. Intel has largely forsaken existing interfaces and is making a clean break to the newest technology, including serial ATA and PCI express.”

• Grantsdale will be able to handle easy wireless connections, integrated hard disk RAID (for speed or higher data protection) and will have support for THX surround-sound-quality audio.
• Grantsdale replaces the AGP graphics interface with PCI Express interface, currently targeted only at very high end graphics.
• Platform changes also include a new socket (LGA775), paving the way for 4GHz and dual-core processors.

There are other benefits as well. This new package will allow Intel to scale the Prescott processor beyond 3.4GHz by offering almost twice as many processor connections. “These extra connections will provide additional power and ground paths the Prescott processor will need in order to run faster. These extra connections will also provide the extra power to eventually support a faster front side bus than today’s 800MHz speed and the dual-core processors Intel is planning for 2H 2005,” writes Kumar in his note to investors this morning.