SB600 is short for SouthBridge 600 and is ATI’s highly anticipated missing piece of the chipset puzzle. RD580 is a very capable circuit, but without the right companion to handle the various I/O functions such as USB2.0, SATA II and sound system you will not have a complete and competitive chipset. Today’s RD580-based motherboards therefore often use ULi’s M1575 southbridge, which offer most features that users want, something that ATI’s own southbridges, SB450/SB460 i sunable to do. After that NVIDIA took over ULi it’s gotten a bit tougher for ATI to get a hold of the M1575 souhtbridge and the need for SB600 has been growing. Now it seems that ATI is pretty much done and as we have earlier reported that the southbridge would be released in May and as it has now been caught on camera the future is looking bright.
It’s OCW that has come across a picture of SB600, that is expected to support everything from up to 10 USB2.0 ports to SATA II controller with AHCI support.
Source: OCW
