OPTi's Viper-N chipsets hits mobile market with first core logic solution for Pentium PCI notebooks.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 19, 1994--Closing the gap between desktop and mobile Pentium PC offerings, OPTi Monday introduced the second member of its Viper family, Viper-N -- the industry's first core logic chipset for Pentium PCI-based portables.

OPTi's Viper-N chipset provides the to-date absent component that enables PC makers to build high-performance, cool-running Pentium PCI-based notebooks. Viper-N supports Intel Pentium 75/90/100 Processors and will support future processor speeds as they emerge.

With small form factors and price pressures as two key design issues, designers of portable computers look for every opportunity to efficiently utilize board real estate. Additionally, to fully capture Pentium's high performance in a system using battery power and a modest means for cooling, designers need a chipset solution that offers extensive power management. OPTi's Viper-N addresses both areas with a highly integrated logic chipset offering advanced design flexibility and power management capabilities.

Portables Market Grows

OPTi is the leading independent designer and producer of Pentium-class chipsets, and has coupled its expertise in mobile and Pentium PCI to create Viper-N. According to market research firm In-Stat, the notebook market is expected to show a compound annual growth rate from 1994-1998 of 25.8 percent compared with desktop growth expected to be at 4.6 percent.

Together, the Pentium 75 Processor and Viper-N enable a new class of high performance 64-bit PCI-based solutions for the fast growing notebook market.

"We capitalized on our experience in designing high-performance desktop Pentium chipsets, including our initial Viper offering for desktops, and our power-efficient 486 notebook chipsets, to create a best-of-both-worlds solution for Pentium portables," said Ray

Farnham, OPTi's chief executive officer. "With Viper-N, OPTi is able to help shrink the lag time between desktop and portable Pentium PCI-based solutions," he added.

An Integrated Three-Chip Solution With Optional "TTL-Less" Chip

OPTi's Viper-N chipset provides a complete core logic solution for Pentium-based PCI notebooks in three chips. They include the Data Buffer Controller (82C556), the System Controller (82C557) and Integrated Peripherals Controller (82C558N). Optionally, by using OPTi's 82C602 Buffer Chip designers can build a computer that eliminates the requirement for TTL-logic glue chips.

The Buffer Chip includes a Real Time Clock, miscellaneous support logic and buffers. By incorporating this device, designers can build a "TTL-less" system with synchronous cache or a system using asynchronous cache that requires only 2 TTL chips.

"With board real estate especially valuable in portables, integration is key," said John Riley, product marketing manager for OPTi's mobile products, "Viper-N with the optional 602 allows designers to create a Pentium PCI system well within the defined boardspace available in notebooks. With no support logic required, designers can utilize remaining board space for emerging desktop capabilities, such as multimedia, soon to be found in notebooks," he explained.

High Performance Support

OPTi's Viper-N borrows much of the high-performance design features for its mobile solution from its Viper desktop counterpart. The DRAM/cache controllers is a full 64 bits, and supports both synchronous and asynchronous L2 cache. The L1 cache support includes write-through and write-back modes, and the L2 cache support offers power-managed 64KB to 2MB cache in write-back, write-through, or adaptive write-back modes.

The integrated Local BusIDE controller in Viper-N improves IDE bandwidth by avoiding the ISA data bus bottleneck. This functionality is critical for state-of-the-art applications to run at full efficiency.

The Viper-N chipsets' integrated PCI bus interface means designers can work with higher bandwidth peripherals such as graphics and multimedia. With PCI, designers can easily upgrade to emerging interfaces including PCMCIA/CardBus as well as PCI docking stations. "I believe the demand for a higher performance interface will continue to increase with advanced mobile applications," said Riley. "As we looked at the mobile market, a PCI notebook providing an easy-to-implement CardBus interface made smart business sense."

Industry Leading Power Management Control

Leveraging OPTi's mobile expertise and technology, Viper-N offers the most advanced power management and thermal control features available today. This is of primary importance for a chip such as Pentium where its blazing performance can produce high levels of heat dissipation if not well managed.

The Viper-N chipset supports 3.3V CPU operation with 3.3V or 5V DRAM (without requiring translation buffers) and full CPU SMM. It offers clock throttling for CPU power control as well as system clock control. The chipset supports both hardware and software power management, and provides extensive peripheral power control.

It is important for the power management unit to manage not only CPU power consumption, but overall system power consumption as well. The Viper-N chipset provides 10 peripheral timers, 16 power control pins, I/O trapping and full peripheral activity tracking. The latter function tracks peripheral accesses independently of the peripheral timers.

The I/O trapping feature will capture the write instruction for a powered-down peripheral, then power-up the device, and force the CPU to re-execute the write instruction. The transaction is transparent to the user but helps save substantial amounts of power by allowing peripherals to "sleep" more frequently.

OPTi included even more power management interrupt (PMI) sources than its 82C465MV chipset for 486 mobile environments which offers a total of 28. Viper-N has 35 PMI sources that will trigger the CPU into SMM, achieving even greater accuracy for power management.

In addition to these features, the Viper-N chipset offers selectable current drive for the DRAM bus, automatic internal pull-up and pull-down resistor activation, and full suspend power leakage control, all adding to its comprehensive power management feature set.

A Real Handle On Heat

As noted, CPU heat dissipation becomes a significant issue in mobile computers if not properly controlled. OPTi's power management features help ensure that temperature levels will be minimized. Going a step beyond, the Viper-N chipset includes an advanced Thermal Management Unit which tracks CPU temperature and initiates cool-down modes well before the CPU temperature approaches a damage-inducing level.

The Viper-N chipset can also establish equilibrium control to avoid unnecessary cool down cycles. In addition, an external sensor input permits the chipset to accept a TTL-level over-temperature signal and automatically invoke a cool-down mode. For typical applications, Viper-N's power management unit reduces average CPU power consumption by as much as 80 percent.

Price and Availability

The Viper-N chipset includes the 82C556, 82C557 and 82C558N ICs. The 82C556 Data Buffer Controller is available in a 160-pin plastic quad flat pack (PQFP) or a thin profile 176-pin thin quad flat pack (TQFP). Both the 82C557 System Controller and 82C558N Integrated Peripheral Controller come in 208-pin PQFP or TQFP packaging.

The chipset is available now in sample quantities, and is priced at $40 in 10K piece quantities. The 100-pin 82C602 optional Buffer Chip is packaged in a PQFP or TQFP and is available for $4 in quantities of 10K.

OPTi Inc. (NASDAQ:OPTI) is a leading supplier of core logic and peripheral chipsets. Founded in 1989, the company serves manufacturers of mobile and desktop personal computer products worldwide. For more information on OPTi's products, contact 408/980-8178 Ext. 850.

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CONTACT: OPTi Inc.

             Steve Tobak, 408/980-8178
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