The CyberBlade i7 chip is the notebook equivalent to the Apollo MVP4 chip set being sold by core-logic vendor Via Technologies Inc. Both are Socket 7 and Super7-compatible parts designed jointly by Trident and Via; the MVP4 chip set is targeted at desktop systems.

The CyberBlade i7 is tailored for Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Socket 7 and Super7 platforms. A version compatible with Slot 1 is being planned but is "not to be announced any time soon," said Alan Yuen, marketing director for notebook parts at Trident (Mountain View, Calif.).

CyberBlade i7 integrates the functions of a north-bridge core-logic chip with the functions of a Trident 3-D graphics controller. One cost- and space-saving advantage to the integration is that it allows removal of external frame-buffer memory, because the north-bridge portion of the chip can define a chunk of system memory — 4 to 8 Mbytes worth, in Trident's case — as the graphics buffer, Yuen said.

Integration of graphics and north-bridge logic is being pursued by several companies. Core-logic vendor Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. produced such an integrated chip set last year.

Trident appears to be the first to pull off north-bridge integration into a lone graphics chip, and that puts the company a step ahead of graphics competitors such as Intel Corp., Yuan said.

In addition, Intel hasn't tested such integration on the notebook market. "Right now, if you look at Intel, they're only talking about the desktop version. And even their desktop version, from a performance standpoint, is not competitive," he said.

The concept is valuable mainly for lower-end machines, said Peter Glaskowsky, a senior analyst with MicroDesign Resources (Sebastopol, Calif.). That's because the integration usually means skimping on performance in both graphics and core logic, making a combined chip sensible for a lower-cost system that doesn't require premium performance.

"It's basically for sub-$500 PCs, because even at the $600 or $700 level, you have enough budget" for quality discrete graphics chips, he said.

That trade-off cropped up earlier this decade, when so-called unified memory architecture (UMA) chips began to emerge in the graphics realm. "There wasn't enough bandwidth to be able to sustain performance. Your graphics subsystem was degraded," said Larry Chisvin, director of marketing for NeoMagic Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.), which also makes graphics chips for notebooks.

System bandwidth has increased enough to make UMA more viable, but bandwidth to the graphics frame buffer has gone up as well, as have demands for graphics performance, Chisvin said.

"I don't know why that same issue wouldn't exist now," he said. "Certainly, performance of a system running UMA is greater than five years ago, but the expectations have increased."

Tom Kao, who once worked on graphics for Cirrus Logic Inc. and now handles marketing for Silicon Motion Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), said his team dropped the idea of UMA after realizing the performance would be affected.

Power dissipation is another concern with merging graphics and core logic. "If you don't have any graphics frame buffer, [it's] going to cross the system bus to the system memory every time" the screen gets refreshed, Chisvin said. In the case of a laptop computer, the extra bus traffic burns battery life. "If you're going to the system's frame buffer for every access, that's going to use a lot of power," he said.

Trident's CyberBlade i7 is sampling now, with production volumes expected in May or June.