Southbridge features you'd like to see

[Arun]

Exactly what the thread title says - in recent years, southbridges have been stagnating and haven't really been very interesting. You know something is wrong when the biggest innovation of 2007 was probably native support for using NAND as cache! I'm sure some will disagree with that specific example, but you get the point.

The main thing I can think of is RAID5 (and maybe even RAID6) hardware acceleration, personally. Looking around, I could find a die shot of an old IBM product that had it and it didn't look so big, so it certainly shouldn't be on a 55nm process! So, what else could be interesting to integrate (or invent and add) to modern southbridges, if anything?

 

[Jawed]

Who wants RAID that's dependent upon the mobo so that when you change mobo your hard disks no longer work unless you reformat them losing whatever was on them?

Jawed

 

[Arun]

Yeah, I see the problem, but I think it could be circumvented by, for example, offering software that'd allow for manual recovery and guaranteeing it'll remain compatible with future southbridges from the company.

 

[Bludd]

Integrated physics?

 

[willardjuice]

Integrated physics?

Well as long as we are being wishful, an ageia physics chip, a real X-Fi chip, two Killer Network chips, and a custom Killer Network wireless N (with speeds up to 600mbps) chip. Now why can't motherboard companies put all these simple things together.

 

[Blazkowicz]

if you remove IDE and legacy connectors then please leave the old crap as headers on the motherboard (two RS-232, parallel, even gameport). 1x PCIe IDE controllers should also be easy to find.
then, southbridges maybe aren't sexy but what exactly should they do? their purpose is to connect stuff on your PC.

what about a few DDR2 slots (maybe two for cost concerns) to make a ramdisk. 4GB ramdisk should eat crappy wintel 1GB "extreme cache", turboboost or whatever ridiculous name it has for lunch. and you still can have a SSD on sata if you really want to. or if the mobo is really high end it could be four slots.

that thread is not a bad idea afterall. I find high end motherboards ridiculous, who needs three PCIe 16x, 12 SATA ports and shiny heatpipes? would you run a super hot and power hungry triple crossfire (yuck) rig with a huge raid 5 array.. so you're spending thousands but you are too cheap to build a file server. (and what about the power bill)

so mobos should differenciate with something. raid 5 I'm not really convinced of it (cf my reserves, and wouldn't be software good enough? assuming good integrated controllers on PCIe 2.0 and a bearable cost of XOR on a quad cpu. want better there are the expensive cards)

 

[epicstruggle]

Remove legacy connectors/connections/functionality from the SB. Higher quality sound, more sata connections, ability to upgrade bios through usb stick.

 

[Npl]

an x87 FPU for the legacy-programs using it, so this horrible POS can finally vanish from 64bit CPUs.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

an x87 FPU for the legacy-programs using it, so this horrible POS can finally vanish from 64bit CPUs.

Interesting thought, but not very feasible, unless every chipset manufactured from here to eternity contains an x87 FPU. Besides, then you'd only be inducing latency by going off-die and across an interconnect to perform x87 ops.

 

[Davros]

ability to upgrade bios through usb stick.

Asus boards can do that
i would also like to boot from a usb stick

 

[MulciberXP]

...

 

[vazel]

Soundstorm 2! The original has come in really handy in my HTPC.

 

[INKster]

I could see a MIPS, ARM or even mini-x86-based controller replacing the Southbridge altogether.

As the memory controller gets flushed away to the CPU in both AMD and (future) Intel CPU's, why not give the ol'Southbridge a little more independence and programmability, perhaps even with its own dedicated memory IC next to it, helping with hardware acceleration of high-speed SSD's/SATA data transfers, 10Gbit Ethernet, inter-GPU PCI-Express Graphics data transfers, etc, without intervention of the main CPU or even main OS.

Imagine the ability to plug a USB or eSATA drive with built-in OLED screen and interface onto a notebook (like a portable media player would) and have the ability to see, listen, transfer, copy or delete music and video files while the main GPU, CPU and RAM are completely powered down.
Microsoft's "Windows Sideshow" taken to the extreme -no Windows- (meaning, full OS independence).

Hey, i can dream. :smile:

 

[Bludd]

But the memory controller is on the northbridge, not the southbridge..

 

[INKster]

But the memory controller is on the northbridge, not the southbridge..

I mentioned the memory controller, didn't i ?
If you propose a MIPS or ARM core, then you assume that they would use versions of those cores with their own built-in memory controller (hence, the dedicated IC next to the Southbridge that i've also mentioned).