ONE IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT Intel will make when it rolls out its "Springdale" and "Canterwood" chipsets next year is a unified driver approach which it will call Stable Image Technology. The shrewd plan is part of a move to reassure big business – the commercial desktop market – that by releasing unified drivers and silicon hardware technology validated by Intel, there will be over 12 months of stability which will also allow for new developments.
Like most ideas, this is not absolutely new. Nvidia has a unified driver approach which allows it to bring out, from time to time, performance updates to its existing products. But this may well affect third party chipset manufacturers, including ATI and SIS – which are Intel P4 licensees – and Via, which is not. If only Intel is able to offer these unified drivers for its chipsets, the third party manufacturers will need to think again about differentiating their products.
Meanwhile, details have emerged on pricing for next years 800MHz system bus chipsets. At launch, the Canterwood will likely be priced at $50, the Springdale-G at $42, and the Springdale-PE at $35. The Springdale-P, which won"t be supporting the 800MHz system bus, will be priced three dollars or so below this. The next price cuts for Intel desktop chipsets come on the 29th of December, with most of the existing P4 chipsets losing a few dollars off their prices. The next cut after that will likely be the 30th of March, when only minor adjustments to the existing Pentium 4 chipsets will be made