There is absolutely no need in RDRAM memory in the current PC market and the release of SiS R658-powered mainboard by ABIT proved this well early this year. Nevertheless, Silicon Integrated Systems today rolled-out its R659 core-logic. The chipset boasts with quad-channel RDRAM support, an ambitious project carried out the first time in PC history, as well as 800MHz QPB. A very extravagant feature of SiS R659 is that it is being formally announced in the fourth time!

SiS R659 core-logic is designed to provide 4-channel RDRAM PC1200 and is able to sport up to 9.60GB/s of peak memory bandwidth. The chipset also includes architectural enhancements for higher performance through faster response time, a feature SiS calls Advanced HyperStreaming. In total SiS’ R659 supports up to 16GB of memory with 9.60GB/s speed, while the forthcoming Prescott CPUs with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus require just 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth. The R659 North Bridge is to be coupled with the SiS964 I/O controller, which integrates 8 USB 2.0 ports and Serial ATA-150 RAID features.

Advanced HyperStreaming Engine (AHSE) is an advanced version of the HyperStreaming Engine implemented into SiS’ core-logic earlier this year. AHSE technology features “Low Latency with single stream”, “Pipelining and Concurrent Execution with Multiple streams”, “Prioritized Channel with Specific stream”, “Smart flow control and Intelligent arbitration with Smart stream” and “Advanced stream accelerative technology”, compared to Intel’s PAT, provide a remarkable improvement in transfer speeds between the CPU, DRAM and the MCH. While AHSE shares the same high-speed hardware read/write capabilities that are inherent to the original HyperStreaming Engine, it is also compatible with identical operating environments and supports the same graphic and audio capabilities. The outstanding memory bandwidth supported by AHSE makes a clearly noticeable improvement in overall system performance.

SiS claims that its Advanced HyperStreaming Engine is able to push PC performance to the new heights.

SiS said that samples of the R659 will be available in the fourth quarter, but does not tell us anything of actual availability or real products. I will not analyse the prospects of SiS R659 at this time because I already did it earlier this year, see this and this news-stories. The situation has not really changed since then – R659 offers performance exceeding today’s needs, but does not give enough for tomorrow’s demand.