AMD-backed standard wins industry support

Industry vendors at Comdex have said they will support an AMD-backed standard for exchanging data between semiconductors.

The host of companies - including Acer Laboratories, Altera, AMCC, Fast-Chip, Flow Engines, GDA Technologies, Josipa Company, LEDA Systems, Marvell Semiconductor, Nokia, Spinnaker Networks, Teradyne, Xilink and 0-In Design Automation - said they have licensed the technology and will work with members of the HyperTransport Technology Consortium (HTC).

Backed by AMD and others, HyperTransport is a parallel bus which can be implemented in just about any chip architecture.

"Since the formation and launch of the HTC in July of this year, we have been determined to work with companies that are extending HyperTransport technology to next-generation applications, and the newest members of the consortium are doing just that," said HTC president Gabriele Sartori.

The technology provides a high-performance link for networking and embedded applications and is designed to enable the chips inside PCs, servers, and networking and communications devices to communicate with each other faster than some existing bus technologies.

Consortium members showcased the technology during the trade show. API Networks, for example, demonstrated the industry's first HyperTransport switch. The AP4041 4-port switch shows how system designers can achieve higher bandwidth, up to 102.4Gbps, and lower latency.

The company also showed a high bandwidth HyperTransport link working through a cable and connectors, and a HyperTransport PCI bridge chip.

AMD, API Networks, nVidia and PMC-Sierra also demonstrated how each company had integrated the technology into its product architectures. nVidia currently uses HyperTransport in its nForce chipset for desktop PCs based on AMD's Athlon processor.

AMD said it would use HyperTransport processors in its Hammer desktop PCs and server processors.

3GIO, a similar technology developed by rival Intel, will complement HyperTransport as the eventual successor to PCI, the standard for connecting devices such as graphics and network cards to computers.

Existing members include Cisco Systems, Apple Computer, nVidia, PMC-Sierra, SGI, Sun Microsystems and Transmeta.