[IDF] Intel and IBM working on PCI Express extension: Geneseo

Intel announced that they teamed up with IBM to work on an extension for the well adopted PCI Express standard. The new 'Geneseo' technology aims to make PCI Express more suitable for connecting various accellerator chips with the processor. These accellerator chips can be 3D chips of course, but also a physics processing unit or other chips that speed up a particular type of computations. The Geneseo technology will make sure that the bandwith between the CPU and the other chips will be much higher than with current PCI Express technology and Intel and IBM also aim to lower the latencies, especially by diminishing the delays caused by the PCI Express software stack. Dozens of companies already joined the Geneseo consortium, including well know chip designers like nVidia and Ageia. Intel aims to finish the Geneseo standard within 18 months. Roughly one year later the first products should hit the market.

With the Geneseo technology Intel has an answer to AMD's Torranza plans, another future technology that offers a fast and efficient interface between the CPU and other chips within a PC.