The Blackford Northbridge Chipset for the Intel 5000

The Intel 5000 is a shared-memory, symmetric dual-processor system based on the energy-efficient, high-performance Intel core 2 dual- and quad-core processors. A key component is the northbridge, which interconnects processor, memory, and I/O interfaces. The Blackford northbridge chipset provides multicore processor support and platform-level features and technologies. In this article, we describe the Intel 5000 component architecture, focusing on the BNB chipset and its main interfaces. We also describe the chipset's key innovations, which help define new standards of function, performance, and feature set in the dual-processor segment.