Contrary to some speculation, AMD will likely continue to work with ASMedia Technology to build its chipsets, upcoming 500-series included, Taiwanese media Digitimes reported today.
According to the Taiwanese publication, the integrated-circuit design company owned by Asus is "expected to land contract design orders for all mainstream PCIe chips from AMD even after the U.S. chipmaker rolls out X570 motherboard chipsets that support PCIe 4.0". Our own motherboard sources have told us that AMD could continue to incorporate ASMedia elements into parts of the chipset, such as USB 3.1 support.
ASMedia is a pretty well-known name in the motherboard field. The company is mostly responsible for providing third-party USB, PCIe and SATA controllers for both AMD and Intel motherboards. As a matter of fact, ASMedia was the one who designed and produced AMD's Promontory chipsets, such as the 300-series and 400-series for the chipmaker's Zen processor microarchitecture. So when word of AMD designing the X570 chipset in-house got out, many thought AMD would ditch ASMedia.
AMD processors have been exposed to a few vulnerabilities in the past through ASMedia's chipsets. Correcting the issues takes a while as AMD has to go through ASMedia to do so. Therefore, having a more direct control over the design process could be a reason for AMD to go with an in-house design.
However, there's just one inconsistency with Digitimes' report: the time frame. The article says ASMedia will not complete the tape-out for PCIe 4.0 until the end of the year. However, the penultimate paragraph claims ASMedia will roll out tape-outs for PCIe 4.0 by the end of of the year.
AMD is expected to launch its Ryzen 3000-series processors roughly around Q3. One of the new chips' selling point is support for the PCIe 4.0 interface, so naturally AMD will want X570 motherboards available to customers to house them, one way or another.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
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shrapnel_indie Maybe ASMedia is actually taping out for PCIe 5.0 in spite of only PCIe 4.0 from Ryzen 2? Probably not though.Reply -
Paul17041993 Considering AM4 only allows 24 PCIe lanes, 2 SATA and 4 USB3 through the socket, a breakout hub (aka the "chipset") is still needed for regular ATX boards. This could simply be another refresh of the current chips, or we could see them upgraded to 8xPCIe3 with the main x4 link upgraded to PCIe4, which simply means even more NVMe and USB flexibility.Reply -
jgraham11 Again with the misinformation... Asmedia vulnerabilities affect Intel and AMD chipsets.Reply
Intel's BTW represents 10x more by volume (from back before Kabylake), its interesting that only AMD's processors are mentioned whenever these vulnerabilities are brought up, good job Tom's for losing even more credibility with your skewed reporting. -
TJ Hooker Reply
ASMedia doesn't make Intel chipsets. Occasionally motherboard manufacturers may add a 3rd party (e.g. ASMedia) controller to an Intel board to add more ports. But it looks like the ASMedia vulnerability mentioned related to the PCH/chipset proper, so it's not relevant to Intel boards.21722429 said:Again with the misinformation... Asmedia vulnerabilities affect Intel and AMD chipsets.
Intel's BTW represents 10x more by volume (from back before Kabylake), its interesting that only AMD's processors are mentioned whenever these vulnerabilities are brought up, good job Tom's for losing even more credibility with your skewed reporting.