Intel X99, codenamed "Wellsburg", is a

Platform Controller Hub The Platform Controller Hub (PCH) is a family of Intel's single-chip chipsets, first introduced in 2009. It is the successor to the Intel Hub Architecture, which used two chipsa northbridge and southbridge, and first appeared in the Intel 5 Se ...

(PCH) designed and manufactured by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

, targeted at the high-end desktop (HEDT) and enthusiast segments of the Intel product lineup. The X99 chipset supports both Intel Core i7 Extreme and

Intel Xeon Xeon (; ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same archite ...

E5-16xx v3 and E5-26xx v3

processors Processor may refer to: Computing Hardware * Processor (computing) ** Central processing unit (CPU), the hardware within a computer that executes a program *** Microprocessor, a central processing unit contained on a single integrated circuit ( ...

, which belong to the

Haswell-E Haswell is the List of Intel codenames, codename for a Central processing unit, processor microarchitecture developed by Intel as the "fourth-generation core" successor to the Ivy Bridge (microarchitecture), Ivy Bridge (which is a die shrink/Tick ...

and

Haswell-EP Xeon (; ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, Server (computing), server, and embedded system, embedded markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon proces ...

variants of the Haswell

microarchitecture In electronics, computer science and computer engineering, microarchitecture, also called computer organization and sometimes abbreviated as μarch or uarch, is the way a given instruction set architecture (ISA) is implemented in a particular ...

, respectively. All supported processors use the LGA 2011-v3

socket Socket may refer to: Mechanics * Socket wrench, a type of wrench that uses separate, removable sockets to fit different sizes of nuts and bolts * Socket head screw, a screw (or bolt) with a cylindrical head containing a socket into which the hexag ...

. The X99 chipset was released in late August 2014, while the supported processors were released in late August 2014 (Haswell-E) and early September 2014 (Haswell-EP). In May 2016, X99's processor support was extended to the Broadwell variants of the Intel Core i7 Extreme and Intel Xeon E5-16xx v4 and E5-26xx v4 processors, which belong to the Broadwell-E and Broadwell-EP variants of the Broadwell microarchitecture, respectively.

Features

The X99 chipset uses a

Direct Media Interface In computing, Direct Media Interface (DMI) is Intel's proprietary link between the northbridge (or CPU) and southbridge (e.g. Platform Controller Hub family) chipset on a computer motherboard. It was first used between the 9xx chipsets and t ...

(DMI) 2.0 ×4 link for the connection between the processor and itself; that way, a total bandwidth of 20

Gbit/s In telecommunications, data transfer rate is the average number of bits ( bitrate), characters or symbols ( baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are mu ...

is available to all connectivity options provided by the chipset. Up to eight PCI Express 2.0 lanes are provided by the X99 chipset, with speeds of up to 5 Gbit/s per

lane In road transport, a lane is part of a roadway that is designated to be used by a single line of vehicles to control and guide drivers and reduce traffic conflicts. Most public roads (highways) have at least two lanes, one for traffic in eac ...

and a possibility to configure these lanes into ×1, ×2 and ×4 links. Additionally, the X99 chipset supports a configurable layout of the PCI Express 3.0 lanes provided by the processor, which may be configured as up to two ×16 links and one ×8 link, or up to five ×8 links (the total number of available PCI Express 3.0 lanes depends on the processor used). Two Serial ATA (SATA) 3.0 controllers are integrated into the X99 chipset, providing a total of up to ten ports for storage devices and supporting speeds of up to 6 Gbit/s per port, with hardware support for the

Advanced Host Controller Interface The Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) is a technical standard defined by Intel that specifies the register-level interface of Serial ATA (SATA) host controllers in a non-implementation-specific manner in its motherboard chipsets. The ...

(AHCI) logical interface. Each SATA port may be enabled or disabled as needed. Six SATA ports provided by the first controller may be configured for Rapid Storage Technology (RST) 13.1, which supports

RAID RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...

0, 1, 5 and 10 levels; additionally,

Smart Response Technology In computer data storage, Smart Response Technology (SRT, also called SSD Caching before it was launched) is a proprietary caching mechanism introduced in 2011 by Intel for their Z68 chipset (for the Sandy Bridge–series processors), which ...

(SRT) disk caching allows the creation of

hybrid volume A hybrid drive (solid state hybrid drive – SSHD, and dual-storage drive) is a logical or physical computer storage device that combines a faster storage medium such as solid-state drive (SSD) with a higher-capacity hard disk drive (HDD). Th ...

SATA Express SATA Express (sometimes unofficially shortened to SATAe) is a computer bus interface that supports both Serial ATA (SATA) and PCI Express (PCIe) storage devices, initially standardized in the SATA 3.2 specification. The SATA Express co ...

and M.2 are also supported, providing the ability for interfacing with PCI Express-based storage devices. Each of the X99's SATA Express ports requires two PCI Express 2.0 lanes provided by the chipset, while the M.2 slots can use either two 2.0 lanes from the chipset itself, or up to four 3.0 lanes taken directly from the processor. As a result, the X99 provides bandwidths of up to 3.94 GB/s for connected PCI Express storage devices. One

Extensible Host Controller Interface The eXtensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) is a technical specification that provides a detailed framework for the functioning of a computer's host controller for Universal Serial Bus (USB). Known alternately as the USB 3.0 host controller ...

(xHCI) controller and two Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI) controllers are integrated into the X99 chipset, providing a total of up to 14 USB ports. Out of those ports, up to six can be configured as USB 3.0 ports with speeds of up to 5 Gbit/s per port, while the remaining are USB 2.0 ports with speeds of up to 480

Mbit/s In telecommunications, data transfer rate is the average number of bits (bitrate), characters or symbols (baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are multi ...

per port. Each USB port may also be enabled or disabled as needed. Integrated

Intel High Definition Audio Intel High Definition Audio (IHDA) (also called HD Audio or development codename Azalia) is a specification for the audio sub-system of personal computers. It was released by Intel in 2004 as the successor to their AC'97 PC audio standard, but it ...

(HD Audio) supports up to four hardware

audio codec An audio codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream (a codec) that encodes or decodes audio. In software, an audio codec is a computer program implementing an algorithm that compresses and decompres ...

s and multi-channel audio streams. An Intel

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use in ...

controller is also integrated, supporting (among other features) receive-side scaling (RSS) with two hardware receive queues. Some of the connectivity options and interfaces provided by the X99 chipset are configurable via Flexible I/O, which allows certain hardware capacities of the chipset to be selectively distributed between the PCI Express, USB 3.0 and SATA interfaces. That way, connectivity options of the X99 chipset may be adjusted to fit the needs of a particular motherboard implementation; for example, some of the SATA or USB 3.0 ports may be exchanged for additional PCI Express 2.0 lanes. The X99 chipset supports Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (Intel VT-d), which provides hardware support for

virtualization In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s wit ...

by implementing an input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). The chipset also integrates a

Low Pin Count The Low Pin Count (LPC) bus is a computer bus used on IBM-compatible personal computers to connect low-bandwidth devices to the CPU, such as the BIOS ROM (BIOS ROM was moved to the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) bus in 2006), "legacy" I/O ...

(LPC) interface, supporting

interrupt controller In computing, a programmable interrupt controller (PIC) is an integrated circuit that helps a microprocessor (or CPU) handle interrupt requests (IRQs) coming from multiple different sources (like external I/O devices) which may occur simultane ...

s, timers, power management,

super I/O Super I/O (sometimes Multi-IO) is a class of I/O controller integrated circuits that began to be used on personal computer motherboards in the late 1980s, originally as add-in cards, later embedded on the motherboards. A super I/O chip combine ...

real-time clock A real-time clock (RTC) is an electronic device (most often in the form of an integrated circuit) that measures the passage of time. Although the term often refers to the devices in personal computers, server (computing), servers and embedded ...

(RTC), etc. Integrated

Serial Peripheral Interface Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) is a de facto standard (with many variants) for synchronous serial communication, used primarily in embedded systems for short-distance wired communication between integrated circuits. SPI follows a master� ...

(SPI) allows interfacing with devices such as

Trusted Platform Module A Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a secure cryptoprocessor that implements the ISO/IEC 11889 standard. Common uses are verifying that the boot process starts from a trusted combination of hardware and software and storing disk encryption keys. ...

s (TPMs) and serial flash devices.

System Management Bus The System Management Bus (SMBus or SMB) is a single-ended simple two-wire bus for the purpose of lightweight communication. Most commonly it is found in chipsets of computer motherboards for communication with the power source for ON/OFF instruc ...

(SMBus) is also provided, with additional support for I²C devices.

Overclocking In computing, overclocking is the practice of increasing the clock rate of a computer to exceed that certified by the manufacturer. Commonly, operating voltage is also increased to maintain a component's operational stability at accelerated sp ...

is available for unlocked variants of the supported processors. As a significant new feature, the X99 enthusiast platform as a whole was the first to support

DDR4 Double Data Rate 4 Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DDR4 SDRAM) is a type of synchronous dynamic random-access memory with a high bandwidth ("double data rate") interface. Released to the market in 2014, it is a variant of dynamic rando ...

memory. Thanks to the features of

integrated memory controller A memory controller, also known as memory chip controller (MCC) or a memory controller unit (MCU), is a digital circuit that manages the flow of data going to and from a computer's main memory. When a memory controller is integrated into another ...

s (IMCs) of supported processors, the X99 platform also supports dual- and quad-channel memory layouts, with optional support for registered

ECC memory Error correction code memory (ECC memory) is a type of computer data storage that uses an error correction code (ECC) to detect and correct ''n''-bit data corruption which occurs in memory. Typically, ECC memory maintains a memory system immun ...

References

External links

*
X79 vs. X99: What is new in X99 and Haswell-E
August 29, 2014, by Matt Bach {{Basic computer components

X99 Intel X99, List of Intel codenames, codenamed "Wellsburg", is a Platform Controller Hub (PCH) designed and manufactured by Intel, targeted at the Desktop computer, high-end desktop (HEDT) and enthusiast segments of the Intel product lineup. Th ...

Computer-related introductions in 2014

Features

See also

References

External links