TAIPEI, TAIWAN--FEBRUARY 14, 2001--At Platform Conference 2001, AMD today announced it is working with more than 100 key business partners throughout the computer and communications industries to help drive the development and widespread adoption of its HyperTransport™ technology. Industry heavyweights Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), Cisco Systems, NVIDIA and Sun Microsystems, Inc. plan to use AMD's HyperTransport technology to increase the performance of their future products. A HyperTransport consortium is also planned.
HyperTransport technology, formerly code-named Lightning Data Transport (LDT), is an innovative new technology that moves information faster. With a peak data transfer rate of 6.4GB per second possible, HyperTransport technology is designed to enable the chips inside of PCs, networking and communications devices to communicate with each other up to 24 times faster than with existing technologies.
"HyperTransport technology is designed to accelerate internal system communications for a broad range of applications. Although initially developed for high-performance PC and server platforms, the technology is also gaining momentum in networking and communications devices, embedded applications, and other non-PC devices," said Linley Gwennap, Principal Analyst of The Linley Group. "With major industry players like Cisco and Sun endorsing the technology and planning to integrate it into commercial products, the future of HyperTransport looks bright."
HyperTransport is designed to reduce bottlenecks and speed the flow of data inside of computers and the networking devices that power the Internet. Additionally, AMD plans to use HyperTransport technology to help servers, workstations and PCs powered by its next-generation family of processors reach new pinnacles of performance.
"HyperTransport technology is planned to enhance overall system performance of AMD platforms, from desktops to servers," said David W. Williams, director of Windows® Hardware Strategy at Microsoft. "AMD's design allows for future I/O performance improvements and lower design costs while maintaining compatibility with existing operating systems."
"With AMD's octane-charged HyperTransport technology, computers and networking devices of all types can be developed to integrate new features that were previously unavailable because of limited chip-to-chip communication speed," said Dirk Meyer, Group Vice President of AMD's Computation Products Group. "Today's announcement again reinforces our commitment to drive state-of-the-art technology into the market."
"HyperTransport is the latest of several technologies AMD has driven to market that deliver tangible performance increases compared to the technologies they replaced. Notably, AMD spearheaded 3DNow!™ technology, adapted the Alpha™ EV6 bus for PCs with the AMD Athlon™ processor, and spurred on DDR memory technology with the introduction of our AMD-760™ chipset," said Richard Heye, Vice President of AMD's Platform & Infrastructure Engineering & Microprocessor Business Management. "HyperTransport technology is yet another example of how AMD collaborates with its partners in response to industry needs, promoting a new standard for internal system communications."
Multiple products integrating support for HyperTransport technology are in development to support desktop and notebook PCs, workstations and servers, and Internet communication devices.
HyperTransport™ Technology Garners Industry Support
More than 100 companies are working with AMD to drive the development of HyperTransport technology. An increasing number of these companies, including Broadcom, Cisco, NVIDIA and Sun Microsystems, have licensed the technology to design into their products.
"As a leader in the broadband communications arena, Broadcom's products take technology into the home and office, transforming the way people live and work. HyperTransport technology is planned to enhance the user's experience even further, offering faster transmission for data, voice and video," said Dan Dobberpuhl, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Broadband Processor Business Unit.
"AMD's HyperTransport bus is an important new technology that aligns well with Cisco's objective to empower the Internet generation. It will help us bring to market a new generation of intelligent, high-performance-processor based network solutions," said John Wakerly, Vice President and CTO of Cisco's Enterprise Line of Business.
"Media rich PCs and game consoles will benefit from AMD's new HyperTransport technology," said Dan Vivoli, executive vice president of marketing at NVIDIA. "By reducing the bottlenecks that impede the flow of data traffic between system components, HyperTransport is designed to free audio, communications and graphics engines to run at full throttle, providing end users with an unmatched experience."
"Sun continually evaluates new technologies, like HyperTransport, to enable the next level of bus performance and functionality in our workstations and servers," said Balint Fleischer, director of architecture and technology, Internet Desktop and Servers Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Sun is committed to driving industry standards to bring the most advanced technologies to our customers."
Third-party products using HyperTransport technology are planned to sample soon from companies including Altera and NVIDIA, and AMD plans for the first products to be commercially available later this year.
About HyperTransport™ Technology
HyperTransport is a new high-speed, high-performance, point-to-point link for integrated circuits. HyperTransport provides a universal connection that is designed to reduce the number of buses within the system, provide a high-performance link for embedded applications, and enable highly scalable multiprocessing systems. It was developed to enable the chips inside of PCs, networking and communications devices to communicate with each other up to 24 times faster than with existing technologies.
Compared with existing system interconnects that provide bandwidth up to 266MB/sec, HyperTransport technology's bandwidth of 6.4GB/sec represents better than a 20-fold increase in data throughput. HyperTransport provides an extremely fast connection that complements externally visible bus standards like the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), as well as emerging technologies like InfiniBand. HyperTransport is the connection that is designed to provide the bandwidth that the new InfiniBand standard requires to communicate with memory and system components inside of next-generation servers and devices that will power the backbone infrastructure of the telecomm industry. HyperTransport technology is targeted primarily at the information technology and telecomm industries, but any application in which high speed, low latency and scalability is necessary can potentially take advantage of HyperTransport technology.
HyperTransport technology also has a unique daisy-chainable feature, giving the opportunity to connect multiple HyperTransport input/output bridges to a single channel. HyperTransport technology is designed to support up to 32 devices per channel and can mix and match components with different bus widths and speeds.
Platform Conference 2001
AMD's HyperTransport announcement is taking place today and tomorrow in conjunction with Platform Conference 2001 at the Taipei International Convention Center. As a co-sponsor, AMD is delivering the keynote address and leading several technical sessions.
The Platform Conference delivers comprehensive information on new and emerging technologies delivered first-hand by engineers and technical experts in specialized sessions that facilitate debate and interactive discussion. The following is a listing of AMD sponsored sessions: |
