Comdex 2001: Chipmakers embrace HyperTransport standard

The HyperTransport standard for exchanging data between semiconductors is picking up speed.

More than a dozen companies have licensed the new standard, the HyperTransport Consortium, an the industry group charged with stewarding the technology, announced on Monday.

Acer Laboratories, Altera, AMCC, Fast-Chip, Flow Engines, GDA Technologies, Josipa Company, LEDA Systems, Marvell Semiconductor, Nokia, Spinnaker Networks, Teradyne, Xilinx and 0-In Design Automation have all licensed the technology and agreed to work further to develop it.

HyperTransport was originally developed by Advanced Micro Devices for exchanging data between multiple processors in servers. But the technology's reach has broadened into networking and other applications. Meanwhile, 3GIO, a similar technology developed by Intel, will complement HyperTransport as the eventual successor to PCI, the longtime standard for connecting devices such as graphics cards and network cards to computers.

Texas Instruments joined the HyperTransport Consortium earlier in November. AMD recently announced plans to use HyperTransport processors, beginning with its Hammer family of desktop PCs and server processors. TI is expected to use the technology in its chipsets for cellular phones.

Communications chipmaker PMC-Sierra also said this week that it has built HyperTransport into its newest chips.

API NetWorks, Apple Computer, Cisco Systems, Nvidia, Sun Microsystems, Transmeta and SGI are members, along with AMD and PMC-Sierra.

Graphics chipmaker nVidia uses HyperTransport in its new nForce chipset for desktop PCs based on AMD's Athlon processor.

See Chips Central for the latest headlines on processors and semiconductors.

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