If there's one place we weren't expecting to find a 2010 Intel motherboard, it's probably the Shuttle booth at COMPUTEX '09.
To our surprise, whilst playing with the small-form-factor specialist's X50 all-in-one PC, we stumbled across this:
Yep, that's a board based on Intel's H57 chipset - a high end derivative of Ibex Peak that isn't due to reach market until Q1 2010. As with the first Ibex Peak boards - P55 due in Q3 '09 - it'll utilise socket LGA 1156 and support both 45nm Lynnfield (Core i5) and 32nm Clarkdale processors, with the latter featuring two cores and an integrated IGP.
Allowing support for the CPU-integrated graphics, the chipset features a Flexible Display Interface (FDI) and it's also imbued with support for Intel's Braidwood technology. If you've not heard of that one yet - and it's impossible to know all of Intel's code names, believe us - think of it as Turbo Memory on steroids, as it can provide up to 16GB of cache on the board itself. That's what the NVRAM slot is for, we reckon, and we're a little puzzled as to why we're seeing the slot on P55 boards too. Will we be seeing Braidwood implemented on Core i5 boards? We wouldn't rule it out, and the late addition of Braidwood might explain why we're waiting until September to see Core i5 in stores.
16GB of on-board cache, that's enough to meet the minimum storage requirement of an operating system such as Windows 7. Built-in SSD for the system drive, anyone?
