What is i820?

The i820 is a type of computer chipset manufactured by Intel Corporation, released in 1999. It was designed as a successor to the i440BX chipset and featured support for the latest Pentium III and Celeron processors, as well as support for RDRAM (Rambus Dynamic Random Access Memory) technology.

The i820's launch faced a significant problem, however, as it was discovered that the RDRAM memory modules were incompatible with the chipset's memory controller. This resulted in a recall of the initial batch of i820 chipsets, and also led to a delay in the release of the i820-based motherboards.

Despite this rocky start, the i820 chipset became widely adopted by computer manufacturers and offered improved performance over the i440BX. It also set the stage for future Intel chipsets that would support the newer memory technologies like DDR SDRAM (Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory).