Richard - Re: "HotRail's first SMP products -- targeted for qualification in early 2000 -- "
Looks like Hot Rail has already SLIPPED THEIR SCHEDULE by a few months!
The chipset, which is expected to reach the market later this year, would allow AMD to take on archrival Intel Corp. in the server market.
Paul
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The Technology Network
Poseidon interface could launch AMD into server market
By Jack Robertson, Electronic Buyers' News
Mar 12, 1999 (11:41 AM)
URL: ebnews.com
Poseidon Technology Inc. plans to introduce a memory interface that could put Advanced Micro Devices Inc. into the PC-server market. Poseidon, a former maker of Intel chipsets, is developing a “simultaneous switched-matrix” chipset to connect up to eight of AMD's forthcoming K7 processors. The chipset, which is expected to reach the market later this year, would allow AMD to take on archrival Intel Corp. in the server market.
Rick Shriner, chief executive of Poseidon, claimed the chipset would enable AMD to offer higher PC-server performance than Intel's upgraded Pentium III Xeon. The new Xeon, in a faster Carmel chipset, is also expected to be introduced later this year. “The timing couldn't be better,” Shriner said.
Poseidon was forced to reinvent itself after its main product-an Intel-compatible P5 chipset-reached end-of-life production, Shriner said. Rather than continuing to compete in the crowded x86-chipset arena, Poseidon moved to a totally new architecture that coincidentally was ideally suited for the AMD K7, he said.
AMD is aware of Poseidon's chipset for K7-based servers, according to an AMD spokesman, who added that his company's strategy was to use independent chipset vendors rather than develop the units itself. AMD has made no secret of its ambitions to use the K7 to penetrate the PC-server market for the first time, he said.
The Poseidon chipset doesn't share a conventional processor bus line to connect memory. “This has always been a bottleneck for traditional server chipsets,” Shriner said. “Our switched-fabric architecture connects as many as 14 memory pipelines, each at 3.2 Gbytes/s, individually with each K7 processor. The chipset is completely scalable by connecting memory pipelines to each additional processor.”
Shriner believes Poseidon is the only chipset vendor aiming to link a large number of K7 processors for servers. AMD, he said, is developing a two-processor K7 chipset.
Reliance Computer Corp., a San Jose competitor, has concentrated on products for Intel-based servers. And Via Technologies Inc. and Acer Laboratories Inc., two Taiwanese vendors closely allied with AMD, focus on chipsets for desktop PCs.
Poseidon is focusing solely on first silicon for its AMD K7 server chipset, Shriner said. The switched-matrix architecture, however, is independent of processor type, and could work with Intel chips or any of the Unix-based RISC chips, he added.
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