Intel chipset supply still tight, new Celeron Ds coming up

DigiTimes heard from Taiwanese motherboard makers Intel's 915G chipset supply continues to be tight, whereas the recent shortage of the discrete 945G line may improve slightly in Q1 2006.

Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and VIA Technologies, respectively, are scheduled to roll out PCI Express (PCIe) chipsets equivalent to Intel’s 915G series in the first quarter of next year, following ATI Technologies’ Radeon Xpress 200 series for the Pentium 4 platform, motherboard makers expect.

Due to a massive adoption of Intel’s 945G chipsets by OEM vendors starting from the third quarter of 2005, supply turned out to be short of demand in the channel market, the makers noted. The shortage in the 945G line should be relaxed slightly in January 2006, on less market demand as a result of seasonal effects, the makers said. Despite the scarcity of Intel’s 945G chipsets, the discrete 945P and 945PL lines are currently sufficient in supply, the makers added.

Intel also plans to debut new 65nm single-core Celeron D processors by the end of the second quarter of 2006. This will be the Cedar Mill Celeron D 352 and 356 which are respectively clocked at 3.2GHz and 3.33GHz. Both have 512KB L2 cache.

And in January the chip giant will also debut Pentium D9xx and Pentium Extreme Edition 955 processors with Virtualization Technology.