Due to rather unexpected Intel’s decision to roll-out its 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus, Taiwanese chipset designers found themselves in a rather difficult situation. On the one hand, they now have to develop 800MHz QPB-supporting chipsets or update their solutions originally intended for 667MHz Pentium 4 bus. On the other hand, they have to pay for the license to sell the faster chipsets, what is not the thing they really want as most of SiS’ clients, for example, are more interested in the lower-end core-logic products, whereas ALi simply has very few customers at all and soon it seems it would not be able to afford the license (note that ALi even now has 533MHz-supporting chipsets in the portfolio)…

As DigiTimes web-site reports, both SiS and ALi will not concentrate on showcasing 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus supporting chipsets at the upcoming IDF Spring in San Jose. SiS plans to demonstrate their present line of core-logic products, while ALi will showcase their USB 2.0 controller chips, including its latest host-to-host networking controller chip (M5632) and flash memory card controller chip (M5634). VIA, who is definitely not going to attend Intel’s Developer Forum that starts next week, is likely to unveil their PT400 or PT600 chipset that are already sampling, even this quarter. Remember that in the first half of the year VIA plans to launch PT400, PT600 and PT800 core-logic products (see more details about features of the newcomers here) with 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus support.

Honestly speaking, it is a bit early to talk about Intel’s 800MHz platforms as a number of mainboard makers have not yet finalised their mainboards based on Intel’s own chipsets, while the Taiwanese developers are likely to lose the race for the first-to-market 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus solution.

IDF Spring kicks off on the 18th of February in San Jose, USA. A wide range of technologies will be addressed, including Hyper-Threading, PCI Express, wireless innovations, security advances and mobile and modular platforms. Attendees will also receive essential information on the latest on Pentium 4 and Itanium-based platforms, Intel Internet Exchange Architecture, Intel Personal Internet Client Architecture and Intel's research and development labs.