Nvidia’s Nforce Platform Processing Architecture

Nvidia was out and about showing off its new Nforce Platform Processing Architecture at the Computex tradeshow in Taiwan. Nvidia's Nforce is a new PC platform design, integrating system, graphics, communications, and audio technologies to deliver unmatched system performance for the mainstream PC market. To bridge the gap between the expectations of today's users and the limitations of current and future technologies, with better system performance, Nvidia says it was necessary to depart from the traditional ``Northbridge/Southbridge'' chipset architectures to create an entirely new class of PC platform. Nvidia's Nforce is comprised of two platform processors: the Nforce Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP) and the Nforce Media and Communications Processor (MCP). Both the Nvidia Nforce IGP and MCP feature built-in support for AMD's HyperTransport interconnect technology, for high continuous throughput between the two platform processors. Additionally, both the IGP and MCP have underlying technologies that, when combined into a single, balanced architecture, substantially increase overall system performance. The foundation of the Nforce IGP is comprised of Twin Bank, Nvidia's 128-bit DDR memory architecture that provides the highest memory bandwidth possible, maximizing memory efficiency so users can run multiple applications simultaneously. The addition of a dynamic adaptive speculative pre-processor (DASP) helps boost CPU and system performance and the integration of Nvidia's Geforce 2 GPU handles 3D graphics display.