Intel’s Ibex Peak chipset will be marketed as the P55. Programmed for the third quarter in 2009, it is, you’ll remember, for the LGA1160 platform.
As these are Lynnfield processors which have all the features previously associated with Northbridge, such as the memory controller (double channel DDR3) or the PCI Express controller (16 channels configurable in 2x8 or 1x16), there will be just one chip with all the features of the ICH. Compared with the ICH10, it supports 8 rather than 6 PCI-E x1 Ports, and retains 6 SATA and 12 USB 2.0 ports and a Gigabit Ethernet interface.
The interconnect between CPU and P55 is still on the good old DMI bus, the bandwidth requirements being lower. The Core i7 / X58 will however be on the new QPI, but here the PCI-Express lines reserved for graphics cards are at the same level as the chipset, which is the reason for higher bandwidth requirements.
