The company also announced that it is working with Acer Laboratories, Nvidia, Silicon Integrated Systems and Via Technologies to help co-develop third-party chip sets for its 64-bit processor line.

AMD's own chip set line--dubbed the AMD-8000 series--is designed to work with the company's code-named "Hammer" family of 64-bit processors. The Sunnyvale-based company is reportedly sampling the "Hammer" chips, with volume shipments due out in early-2003--or sooner, according to analysts.

"Hammer" is expected to compete against Intel Corp.'s 64-bit processor line, most notably McKinley. This chip is the follow-on product to Intel's existing 64-bit processor, dubbed Itanium.

AMD's chip set will make use of the HyperTransport I/O technology, which will increase the overall throughput in servers and other systems. "We believe the AMD-8000 series of chip sets will represent a major breakthrough in system chip set design," declared Ed Ellett, vice president of Marketing for AMD's Computation Products Group.

When formally introduced later this year, the AMD-8000 series of chip sets will consist of several components, including the AMD-8111 HyperTransport I/O hub, the AMD-8131 HyperTransport PCI-X tunnel, and the AMD-8151 HyperTransport AGP3.0 graphics tunnel.

The chip set will be available in the fourth quarter of 2002.