United Business Media EE Times


Search

HOMELATEST NEWSSEMICONDUCTORSMOST POPULARMARKET INTELLIGENCE UNITFORUMSDESIGNNEW PRODUCTSCAREERSBLOGSCONTACTEVENTSSIGN UP!RSS

 

AMD to drop EV6 bus in upcoming Hammer microprocessors








EBN


San Jose, Calif. -- Advanced Micro Devices will drop its current Athlon and Duron EV6 bus architecture for its upcoming 64-bit Hammer-series processors to allow for connecting large multiprocessing arrays, the Platform Conference was told Monday.

Bob Mitton, AMD marketing manager for workstations and servers, told the meeting here that the 64-bit processors will use a new NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) bus which can link eight-way or more MPUs for high performance multiprocessing. NUMA uses AMD's projected LDT (Lightning Data Transport) controller to handle both the Northbridge memory and Southbridge I/O buses in an array of processors, he said.

Mitton asserted that NUMA is highly scalable and allows each processor to have full access to the processor bus bandwidth.

By contrast, he claimed Intel Corp.'s new IA-64 architecture for Itanium and the follow-on McKinley processors have a shared processor bus that divides the bandwidth among all the processors.

He conceded that in the NUMA scheme a CPU accessing memory at the far end of the multiprocessor array goes further to fetch data than on a shared bus, but claimed the much-faster LDT offsets any potential delay.

AMD so far has been able only to deploy a uniprocessor 32-bit Athlon version with the EV6 point-to-point bus, although Mitton said the firm is now sampling a two-way Athlon configuration with a new 760MP chipset. He declined to estimate when the 760MP will be commercially available, making a two-way Athlon configuration possible.

The 760MP Northbridge chip will be called 762 and the Southbridge chip will be called the 766.

The 762 controller will be 64-bit data width with an 8-bit ECC and support DDR memory with 2, 2.5 and 3 CAS latencies. It will support DDR PC2100 modules using 64-Megabit to 512-Mbit memory chips. It will support up to 4-gigbytes memory size, according to AMD











  Free Subscription to EE Times
First Name Last Name
Company Name Title
Email address
  Click here for your Free Subscription to EETimes Europe
 
CAREER CENTER
Ready to take that job and shove it?
SEARCH JOBS
SPONSOR

RECENT JOB POSTINGS
CAREER NEWS
Federal CTO Sees IT Leading U.S. Out Of Recession
Aneesh Chopra is looking to other CIOs to advise him on fleshing out a more detailed agenda to best serve the president's IT agenda.

For more great jobs, career related news, features and services, please visit EETimes' Career Center.



All White Papers »   

  Around Silicon Strategies

FPGA startup crunch: These articles are part of a series that examines the status of various FPGA startups in light of the economic recession. Startups Abound Logic, Achronix Semiconductor and Cswitch are all on the hot seat. More...

10 fab technologies on the hot seat: There's trouble brewing in chip-making paradise. Delivery of chips at 32-nm and beyond won't be a cool breeze. EE Times has constructed the following list of 10 fab technologies that could make or break future IC scaling. More...

6 fab technologies on the bubble: It isn't going to be a slam-dunk to deliver chips at 32-nm and beyond. See our story about 10 fab technologies on the hot seat. Then read this article: 6 technologies on the bubble. More...

Our take on Intel-River: With its acquisition of embedded software leader Wind River Systems Inc., Intel Corp. has unambiguously signaled that it is again attempting to diversify beyond X86 processors. Here's our take on the deal. More...

CEVA's reversal: When Gideon Wertheizer, CEVA's CEO, came to New York to ring the closing bell at Nasdaq to celebrate the company's 10th year anniversary, he talked about CEVA's 21.6 percent revenue growth in 2008. More...

Hot technologies to watch for in 2009: Every technologist, marketer, industry analyst and reporter on a hunt for the next big thing is bracing for the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show scheduled less than a month away. More...

Top 20 predictions for semis in 2009: To help sort out the confusion in the market, EE Times has released its own chip forecasts--and other predictions--for 2009. So, what will happen in analog, FPGAs, foundry, memory, MPUs and other sectors? More...

Silicon 60 version 8.0 The EE Times 60 Emerging Startups list, first published in April 2004, has been updated to version 8.0 to reflect the latest corporate, commercial, technology and market conditions. More...

 
Education and
Learning


Learn Now:












Home | About | Editorial Calendar | Feedback | Subscriptions | Newsletter | Media Kit | Contact | Reprints|  RSS|   Digital|  Mobile
Network Websites
International
Network Features




All materials on this site Copyright © 2009 TechInsights, a Division of United Business Media LLC All rights reserved.
Privacy Statement | Terms of Service | About