etPC intitiative may bring up yet another format optimized for such systems.
With the entry of a new player--IDT
spin-off Centaur Technologies, with its C6 200-MHz MMX-enabled processors for the mainstream PC market--it's clear that there's still a lot of life left in socket 7, even if Intel finally abandons it next year. Expect to see slot cards take off further than using just slot 1 and slot 2, as well as 21264 CPU cards in multiprocessor Alpha mainboards in six months. The ability to keep tight control of electrical parameters on small modules will become especially important as cache and memory buses cross the 200-MHz margin and 128-bit widths and dual-data transfers become the norm. Expect a new format to appear that will specifically cover dual- or quad-processor desktop and server systems with slot cards sometime during 1998, a possible successor to the venerable full-size AT form factor.
After its initial glitches, Plug and Play is becoming real, and it will become even more stable after the ISA is (hopefully) gone in 1998. Integrating on-board I/O to some degree will become the norm, even on high-end bo
ards; the Tyan Tahoe 2 and Digital Alpha mainboards are examples. Expect hot-plug PCI to appear on mainboards, as well as integrated CardBus support to share the cards with your notebook, next year.
Finally, there will be even more layers and even finer line pitch, increasing board complexity even as chip sets become more integrated. However, this scenario is understandable, especially with the top-end boards.
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PC Mainboard Road Map for 1997-1998
