Cooler Xtreme : News :
AMD Buys HpyerTransport Test System
AMD Buys HyperTransport Test System
01/08/2001 13:50:09
Schlumberger Semiconductor Solutions
let us know on Friday that AMD has purchased the company's ITS9000ZX system,
which will be used to test the HyperTransport I/O Link data bus technology.
Schlumberger says the test system is expected to help speed development
of AMD's 64-bit Hammer processors that use HyperTransport. The ITS9000ZX
offers a 1.6Gbps data rate, differential pin electronics, integrated source
synchronous timing, and configuration flexibility. More than 180 companies
throughout the computer and communications industries are currently working
with the HyperTransport technology. On Tuesday, AMD, API NetWorks, Apple,
Cisco Systems, NVIDIA, PMC-Sierra, Sun Microsystems, and Transmeta announced
the formation of the HyperTransport Technology Consortium, which will manage
and drive specifications related to the technology. HyperTransport is a
point-to-point link for integrated circuits, developed to let the chips
inside computing devices, networking, and communications devices talk with
each other faster than with existing technologies. Tom talked about HyperTransport
back in June when looking at NVIDIA's nForce. You can also take a look at
the Consortium's website for more info on how it all works.
Understanding that folks tend
to religiously embrace either Intel's 3GI0 or AMD's HyperTransport (you
could probably throw in PCI-X and InfiniBand for that matter), I should
also point you in the direction of an EETimes.com article, which starts
out saying that the PCI SIG is set to formally adopt Intel's 3GIO proposal
and was supposed to vote on the issue on Friday. We haven't heard the results
of any voting yet, so that part of the story seems premature. The article
goes on to say that 3GIO and HyperTransport may even be complementary standards
that address different time frames. As far as I'm concerned, no one seems
to have all the answers.
