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ALi/ULi 揚智/宇力 M1687 K8 chipset (1)
Bluetooth 1 Sept 2003

Introduction

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The Athlon 64 (Socket 754) will be officially announced on 23rd September 2003. ALi which has been quiet for the past 1 year is back in the market. ALi/ULi offers a long ready solution for the K8 and it is the M1687 + M1563.

M1687 is ALi’s new generation North bridge that offers a high-performance and cost-effective solution for PC systems. It supports the AMD® K8 Processors.

With AGP 1x/2x/4x/8x support, M1687 provides system designers with enough headroom to interface with different graphics solutions to fulfill various market requirements. The M1687 introduces HyperTransport™ bus, a next generation link bus that can reach up to 6.4GB/sec to K8 CPU side and up to 1.6GB/sec to our south bridge side in bandwidth.

M1687 coupled with M1563, a highly integrated Southbridge device, brings a complete and cost-effective solution for PC system designers. The M1563 integrates AC-Link Host Controller, 2-channel dedicated Ultra-66/100/133 IDE Master controller, USB 2.0/1.1 Host controllers with 6 ports in total, IO APIC controller, 1/10/100 Mb/s Fast Ethernet and HomePNA 1.0/2.0 MAC layer, and HyperTransport™ Technology Link interface. Additional features include Host Signal Processing (HSP) software modem solution, ACPI support, green function, and Real Time Clock. The M1563 South Bridge also natively supports the Memory Stick and Secure Digital interfaces.

According to ALi, The North and South bridges are interconnected via Hyper transport (1.6GB/s) and not via other means. If you compare to VIA solution which uses V/Link (533MB/s), SiS uses the MULTIOL (1GB/s), ALi's choice of using a higher bandwidth Hyper transport link between the North and South would be more scalable. Below is the block diagram and specifications of the north and south bridges M1687 and M1563.

HyperTransport™ Processor Support

  • Supports K8 processors.

  • 16 bit data bus in each direction.
  • Low signal swing: 1.2V ± 0.3V.
  • High frequency: 400/800/1200/1600 MHz data transfer rate. 
  • Supports lightning bandwidth up to 6.4GB/s.

Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) Interface

  • Supports AGP specification V2.0, V3.0.
  • Supports 533MHz 1.5V signaling.
  • Supports 1x/2x/4x/8x AGP data transfer.
  • Maximum bandwidth 2.133 GB/s
  • Supports 64-bit upstream and 32-bit downstream addressing

HyperTransport™ I/O Support

  • Low pin count: 8 bit data bus in each direction.
  • Low signal swing: 1.2V ± 0.3V.
  • High frequency: 400/600/800 MHz data transfer rate.
  • Supports lightning bandwidth up to 1.6GB/s.
  • High concurrency between requests and responds.
  • Supports connect/disconnect power down mode.
  • Supports tri-state power down mode.

PC 2001 Compliance

Packaging

  • 564-ball 31mmx31mm BGA package

M1563 South Bridge

The M1563 provides the highest integration south bridge solution between HyperTransport™ Technology Link bus, PCI bus and peripheral buses for personal computer systems.

The M1563 integrates AC-Link Host Controller, 2-channel dedicated Ultra DMA mode 6 (ATA 133 ) IDE Master controller, USB 2.0/1.1 Host controllers with 6 ports in total, IO APIC controller, 1/10/100 Mb/s Fast Ethernet MAC layer, and HyperTransport™ Technology Link interface. Additional features include Host Signal Processing (HSP) software modem solution, ACPI support, green function, and Real Time Clock.

The M1563 also provides the best power management solution. It incorporates ACPI support, deep green function, all into one 31mmx31mm BGA (Ball Grid Array) chip.

 HyperTransport Technology ( HTT ) I/O Link

  • HyperTransport™ Technology I/O Link Protocol meets the v1.02 Specification

  • 8-bit HTT links in each direction

  • Support > 400 megabytes per second of simultaneous input and output bandwidth ( > 200 MHz ) HTT clock

PCI Interface

  • PCI spec. 2.3 Compliant

  • PCI Power Management Interface spec 1.1 Compliant

  • Support up to 6 PCI Masters

  • Support up to 6 PCI arbitration priority of PREQ#/PGNT#

Steerable PCI Interrupt for PCI Device Plug & Play

Enhanced DMA Controller

Interrupt Controller

Counter/Timers

Serialized IRQ Supported

Built-in keyboard Controller

Built-in Real Time Clock

PMU Features

  • Full Support for ACPI and OS Directed Power Management

  • Full Support for Instantly Available PC feature

  • CPU SMM Legacy Mode and SMI Feature Supported

  • PMU Operation States : G0, G1( S1, S3, S4 ), G2( S5 ), G3

  • CLKRUN# Function supported for PCI Mobile Design Guide v1.1 (Mobile Only)

  • Clock Generator Control Logic Supported

USB

  • One EHCI USB 2.0 and Three OHCI USB 1.1 Host Controllers for

  • Supporting up to six USB Ports

  • Support HS, FS, and LS data trans rate

  • Support Legacy Keyboard and Mouse

Fast Infra-Red

  • Support IrDA 1.0 and IrDA 1.1

  • Support Sharp-IR

Built-in PCI Controller

  • Support Ultra DMA Mode Transfers up to Mode 6 Timing (100/133/Mbytes/sec)

  • Support 48-bit LBA (Large Disk), hard driver larger than 137 GB

  • Support PIO Modes up to Mode 4 Timings, and Multiword DMA Mode 0, 1, 2 with Independent Timing of up to 4 Drives

Low Pin Count ( LPC ) Interface

  • Support LPC interface for legacy devices

  • Support 2 Master/DMA devices

Memory Stick

  • Built-in Memory Stick Host Controller for supporting Sony Memory Stick Standard Interface Specification v1.3

Secure Digital

  • Copyrights Protection Mechanism-Complies with highest security of SDMI standard

  • Data bus width ( 4-bit or 1-bit ) operation mode selectable

  • UP to 10Mbyte/sec Read/Write rate ( using 4 parallel; data lines )

  • Support Built-in writes protection features.

Audio System

  • Fully Plug-and-Play controller and software

  • PCI 2.2 compliant bus master optimized for multiple stream operation

  • Scatter-gathering support

  • 6 audio playback channels: PCM_out L/R, Surr L/R, Center and LFE

  • SPDIF in/out channel

Software Modem Interface

  • Provide the AC '97 2.2 compliant digital controller interface for third

  • parties ( such as the AMC Codec's vendor ) to enable the software modem solution

  • AC '97 2.2 GPIO pin status and control support

  • Power Management and wake-up event support

  • Caller ID string transmission via AC-link support

1/10/100 Mb/s Fast Ethernet MAC

  • Provide the 1/10/100 Mbps Medium Access Control ( MAC )

  • controller for the best solution of the Ethernet LAN connectivity

  • Compliant with IEEE 802.3u 100BASE-TX, IEEE802.3 10BASE-T standard

  • Compliant with the Network Device Class Power Management 1.0

  • Compliant with IEEE 802.3u Auto-negotiation protocol for automatic link type selection

  • MII Interface

  • WFM 2.0 compliance

Packaging

  • 444-Ball ( 31mmx 31mm ) BGA Package

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