Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) , which has of late been exchanging mobile processor salvos with rival Intel Corp.
, unveiled plans
for its AMD-8000 series of chipsets Thursday.
The Sunnyvale, Calif. chipmaker said the modular AMD-8000 series, built to power future, high-performance servers, workstations and
mobile PCs that require large amounts of virtual and physical memory, is being developed in conjunction with an equally
forward-looking architecture dubbed “Hammer.”
When finished, the AMD-8000 will include the AMD-8111 HyperTransport I/O hub, the AMD-8131 HyperTransport PCI-X tunnel, and the
AMD-8151 HyperTransport AGP3.0 graphics tunnel. HyperTransport technology helps slash system bottlenecks, boost efficiency and
increase system throughput by reducing the number of buses.
Raising the curtain on AMD-8000 is the tip of the iceberg for the firm, as the “Hammer” processor architecture is designed to provide unprecedented PC performance on 32-bit applications while
allowing a migration path to 64-bit applications.
Ed Ellett, vice president of marketing for AMD’s Computation Products Group, called the AMD-8000 series a “major breakthrough” in
the field and said it could “alter the way computers are made in the future.”
“To meet the high-bandwidth demands of current and future graphics and other I/O devices, computer architecture will need to evolve
from the existing platform infrastructure,” Ellett said in a public statement. “These chipsets are designed to be compatible with
today’s hardware components, and allow for a seamless transition to tomorrow’s far more advanced, higher performance platforms.”
Chipset vendors Ali, SiS, NVIDIA, and VIA are working with AMD to design and produce chipsets for the pending “Hammer” processor.
AMD-8000s for the “Hammer” processors are planned to be available in the fourth quarter of 2002.