These Southbridges
will not include USB 3 as we've previously reported, but we haven't heard a peep about Intel
Lightpeek yet either so expect third party chipsets to still get full use here....
Sandy Bridge 'E': Patsburg
Next is Sandy Bridge 'E' (Enthusiast or Extreme, take your pick) 'Patsburg' platform, which features a huge new LGA2011 socket to replace LGA1366 in Q3 next year (although right now that seems dubiously convenient given the year of launch). The larger socket is to accommodate the new four channel DDR3 memory controller this platform will offer, as well as the first outing for
PCI Express 3 - of which we'll get 32 lanes bolted into the CPU itself. The lanes can be split between 2x16 and 4x8 for multi-GPU, but again, there's no details about CrossFire or SLI support at this early stage.
Like LGA1156/1155 motherboards, LGA2011 motherboards will have only a Southbridge, but whether this Southbridge is called 'X68' (as some Taiwanese manufacturers are saying), we don't yet know. The new Southbridge seems like a complete update with a real focus on the single-socket workstation and server market as it houses two SATA 3Gbps and
ten SATA/SAS 6Gbps ports. The interconnect is still a 4x
PCI-E 2.0 DMI link
between this and the CPU, providing some 2Gbit/s of bandwidth.
