AMD's next-gen southbridge chip, called the SB800 and revealed yesterday, is being designed with the company's 'Fusion' processor in mind.

Details of the part have just appeared on Spanish-language site ChileHardware. It posted an AMD slide that provides a run-down of the SB800's features. Most are the customary speed and capacity boosts.

There's no mention of USB 3.0, as you might expect given the SB800's Q2 2009 launch window - clearly AMD doesn't think the 5Gb/s data-transfer is going to be in sufficient demand at that point.

AMD's slide indicates the SB800 will support higher-speed connections to a system's northbridge and, beyond it, the CPU. It sees a doubling of bandwidth from the SB700's 2.5GHz PCIe bus to 5GHz.

That's part of the chip's ability to deal with more powerful processors and to compete with Intel's HyperTransport-style QuickPath Interconnect bus that will debut later this year with the 'Nehalem' chips.

AMD's alternative to Nehalem is Fusion, a new processor design that also has the ability to sport an on-board GPU. Power efficiency will clearly be a key component of Fusion - AMD's slide says the SB800 will support the new CPU's C6 sleep state, a deep level of snoozing that Intel will introduce with its Centrino 2 Core 2 Duo processors.

Corporates will note that the SB800 includes a pair of embedded controllers, one dedicated to Desktop and mobile Architecture for System Hardware (Dash) spec developed by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) to aid remote hardware management - an alternative to Intel's Advanced Management Technology (AMT) chipset technology.

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