AMD forms chip technology alliance with IBM
By Tom Foremski in San Francisco
Published: March 25 2001 18:09GMT | Last Updated: March 25 2001 23:56GMT
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the chief competitor to Intel in microprocessors, has teamed up with IBM to implement a key chip technology in its forthcoming high-end microprocessors.
The move is likely to intensify pressure on Intel to follow suit and give AMD an important advantage in the high-stakes battle to provide chips for powerful servers, a highly profitable market and one that Intel is relying on to help drive revenues.
AMD said it has contracted IBM for chip design services and licensed patents for its forthcoming 64-bit microprocessor, known as Hammer.
The multi-million dollar deal will help AMD implement a key technology pioneered by IBM known as silicon on insulator.
It offers up to 30 per cent improvement in the speed of chips and could enable Hammer to run faster and at a lower temperature than Intel's 64-bit Itanium family of microprocessors.
The deal is also an important endorsement for IBM and SON technology.
IBM has been in the forefront of several important advances in chip technologies, such as the use of copper, which increases performance, SON, and the development of special materials that allow chip circuitry to be made smaller, and thus faster because electrons have shorter distances to travel.
"This deal is important to us because it shows that SON will become a mainstream technology and we have an important competitive advantage," said Bijan Davari, IBM fellow and head of research and technology at IBM Microelectronics.
IBM has provided AMD with the rights to use several of its SON patents in the manufacture of Hammer.
An additional benefit of using SON is that is reduces the amount of electrical power used. This is important in some types of dense server applications where the heat generated by the many powerful server microprocessors in close proximity to each other can be a problem.
Intel is one of the few leading chipmakers not to use SON, or have plans to use the technology.
However, now that AMD has chosen SON for its future chips, Intel may have to evaluate SON for its future chips.
AMD has a lot riding on Hammer because, so far, most of its microprocessor sales are to customers in the consumer PC market. It would like to break into the enterprise PC and server market where Intel dominates with its family of microprocessors.
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