ServerWorks low-cost servers get fast South bridge

ServerWorks Corp. has begun volume shipments of its CSB6 Champion South bridge, which extends to lower-cost servers the features of the company's Grand Champion system I/O core logic chipsets.

The CSB6 is a no-cost upgrade to ServerWorks' old South bridge chip, CSB5, and it works with Serverworks GC-LE and GC-HE North bridges.

By integrating support for the NVRAM, LCD, keypad and watchdog timer interfaces specified by the Microsoft Server Appliance Kit 2.0, the South bridge eliminates the need for discrete I/O components in cost-sensitive, Intel Xeon-based server appliances, said David Pulling, executive VP of sales and marketing at ServerWorks, a Broadcom company.

The CSB6's 64-bit PCI bus transfers data at up to 266MBps compared with the 133MBps possible with a 32-bit PCI bus. Pulling said its speed gives the CSB6 enough capacity to handle the 125MBps traffic generated by a Gigabit Ethernet port.

The chip supports three ATA100 IDE channels, two of which can be used for RAID 0, 1 or 5 arrangements, and a spare channel for use with CD-ROM or backup devices. Pulling said OEMs can now create low-cost server and server appliance configurations with RAID, using only two chips: a North and a South bridge.

EE Times