OPTi chipset eyes portables in 486 realm

Electronic News, Sept 19, 1994

SANTA CLARA, CALIF. - OPTi will today introduce a chipset targeted at the 486 portable computer systems market and offering performance upgrades over the previous generation OPTI chipset, including the addition of both L1 and L2 cache, as well as power management and heat dissipation features. Sources said the company will follow up the introduction with a Pentium-class chipset in October that will offer Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus capabilities.

The new 82C465MV core logic chip supports base clock frequencies of up to 40MHz at 3.3 volts or mixed voltage, and up to 50MHz at 5V. It is fully pin and BIOS backward-compatible with the company's earlier product, the 463MV, and operates with OPTi's existing 82C602 real-time clock and buffer chip. The new chipset's L1 cache support takes advantage of the write-back cache found in the Cyrix CX486DX/DX2 MPUs as well as in existing and planned Intel write-back cache in 486 MPUs. The OPTi 465MV also supports L2 cache with a high-performance write-back cache controller. In addition, the chipset has integrated Local Bus IDE support.

According to John Riley, OPTi's notebook core logic product manager, the introduction of the 465MV is part of the company's strategy to expand into additional markets such as graphics and sound, and based on its proprietary 0.8-micron CMOS process, the 465MV features power management features that represent a key differentiator.

"Power management is a critical part of any mobile computer, but every manufacturer tends to address power management a little differently," Mr. Riley said, adding that prior to designing the 465MV, OPTi consulted customers on their specific needs and formulated power management based on feedback.

OPTI counts among its current customers AST, Dell Computer, Gateway, Panasonic and Zenith. Gateway and Panasonic have been customers for some time, while AST, Dell and Zenith have all unveiled products that incorporate OPTI chipsets within the last three months. Mr. Riley, however, said it is too early to name specific customers for the new 486 chipset, although he said there are buyers. In addition, OPTi will announce a new OEM computer system customer either late this quarter or early next quarter, he said.

The 465MV's power management unit features support for low-power 486 CPUs from AMD, Cyrix and Intel, full system management mode (SMM), full CPU and system clock control, hardware and software-controlled power management thermal management, and peripheral power control.

A peripheral activity tracking system allows the power management code to monitor peripheral activity independent of the status of the peripheral timers. An I/O trapping feature captures the instruction when a mobile computer user writes to a device that is powered down, powers up the device, and then forces the MPU to re-execute the instruction.

Additional features include support of memory "bank skipping," which allows DRAM memory to be used in any configuration in any bank. The chipset also offers programmable chip selects, four external power management interrupt sources and support for either 3.3V or 5V DRAM.

According to Mr. Riley, OPTI's thermal management capabilities can save OEMs cost by eliminating the need for external analog thermistors and their accompanying analog-to-digital converters.

The OPTi 82C465MV comes in a 208-pin plastic QFP and is priced at $18 in OEM quantities. Samples and evaluation boards are available now, and production quantities are expected to ship in October.