The ServerWorks LE chipset.
Serverworks or reliant corporation as they were formerly known
was around since the Pentium PRO days. Their main focus is and always was
the server market. They never had any name recognitions. They relied on specific
market segments to expand. Not that long ago, Serverworks had the opportunity
to take a big step and jump directly in a much highly demanded server market,
where they had the opportunity to grow and grow BIG. Their goal was simple,
produce a descent SMP Intel server chipset that could eliminate the need of
the expensive Rambus memory that Intel’s latest High-End solution (i820, i840)
uses and all of this for a lower price than what Intel’s i820 and i840’s based
solutions are available for.
|
Chipset
Name
|
Intel
820
|
Serverworks
III LE
|
Intel
840
|
|
Maximum
Memory
|
1
GB RDRAM
|
4
GB SDRAM
|
2GB
RDRAM
|
|
FSB
Support
|
100/133
MHz
|
100/133
MHz
|
100/133MHz
|
|
AGP
|
4x
|
N/A
|
4X
|
|
PCI
|
32-bit
|
32/64-bit
|
32/64-bit
|
|
Ultra
ATA
|
33/66/100
|
33/66
|
33/66/100
|
Serverworks successfully accomplished their mission with their
latest ServerSet chipset solutions. The ServerSet LE (Low End) chip is specifically
designed for the server market. The LE chip supports both 100MHz and 133MHz
system bus for single and dual configurations, spotting PC133 SDRAM support
for superior memory performance in terms of higher bandwidth and lower access
latency, and capable of handling up to 4-Gbytes of memory. Of course, to overpass
the i840 platform in terms of features for the money, the ServerSet LE includes
support for up to 2 full 64bit/66MHz PCI busses and supports up to 5 64bit/33MHz
PCI busses. It also features an IDE
(ATA/66) controller and up to four USB ports. Did we forget to mention an
AGP port? Not at all, the LE chipset does not feature one. Because of this,
this specific chip is automatically eliminated from being a Workstation solution
but continues to be an interesting server solution. Tyan and other manufacturer
that started producing boards based on that chip, decided to include onboard
video, after all, a server does not need anything powerfull in that area,
it just requires an adapter that is preferably compatible with multiple operating
systems. Tyan has made the right decision and integrated the ATI Rage XL graphics
adapter with 4MB of frame buffer; this solution should be more than enough
for this type of product. ServerWorks designs the chips and everything else
in terms of design and extra features is up to the manufacturer.
