What Happened to AMD Multiprocessing?

TWX_the_Linux_Zealot asks: "Recently I realized that I hadn't heard anything new regarding AMD processors and SMP, which had occasionally been mentioned on various tech news sites. There is no mention of such chipsets on AMD's Website, or on any of the motherboard manufacturers that I would have expected at least a press release from, such as ASUS, Gigabyte, or Abit Does anyone know what's going on?"

Re:just saw an article on this

[mattdm]

VIA's definitely likely to have a cheaper solution, and I'll be really interested to see the performance -- the regular 760 is marginally faster than VIA's current offerings, from what I've read.

And of course, we've all waited long enough for dual athlon systems -- I dunno if I can hold out for the second chipset release. :)

just saw an article on this

[mattdm]

From http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/#987261890 [xbitlabs.com]

* "Thunder K7" (S2462). This dual-Socket A mainboard for AMD Athlon CPUs will be based on AMD-760MP chipset. It will support PC2100/PC1600 DDR SDRAM and feature an AGP Pro slot. The board will also support ATA-100, Ultra160 SCSI and will have 64bit/33MHz PCI slots and 2 LAN controllers onboard. TYAN has already showcased this mainboard at all large shows this year. Its mass manufacturing should start this quarter.

* "Thunder K7X" (S2466) This is one more dual-Athlon mainboard. However, it is based on AMD-760MPX chipset. Like the previous model it also supports PC2100/PC1600 DDR SDRAM, ATA-100, Ultra160 SCSI and has an AGP Pro slot, 64bit/66MHz PCI slots and 2 LAN controllers onboard. The board will start sampling in May and the mass pieces will appear in July-August.

check out anadtech

[Compay]

There are several reviews of various dual AMD motherboards at Anandtech. In essence, the chipsets are not yet up to snuff, but they're getting pretty close.

Re:just saw an article on this

[ppanon]

Via has not announced any dual-processor chipsets as being in development. A year or so ago there was some noise that they might build s 2-CPU chipsets, but more recent unofficial scuttlebutt seems to be that the AMD760MP is going to be your only Athlon SMP option for the near-medium term future,

Re:Be AMAZED! 2X AMD 2Ghz Tyan Motherboard Benchma

[Whelkman]

You have benchmarks to disprove it? The specs say 2x2GHz and the results come out exactly 4x ahead of the 1x1GHz bench. I doubt 2cpu would doctor their screenshots, if that's what you mean, though I am not half as familiar with this site as I am with other hardware sites.

You obviously haven't been paying much attention..

[ogre2112]

It's just around the corner, and they've displayed the technology at several large computer shows.

Summer?

[SlashGeek]

A month or two ago I was in the process of building a Thunderbird system for myself. Before I commited moneys to a MoBo, I wanted to check on the availability of a 2cpu board; I didn't want to buy a MoBo and have a 2cpu item released the following week. So I did a little research, and for what it's worth, the techs at AMD expect a June-July release for a dual board.

Moving along to the link section... 2cpu [2cpu.com] had a story and linked to this [pcstats.com] article at PCStats a few months ago about a prototype Tyan board. I believe it was even posted on /. 2cpu also linked to another article [tecchannel.com] (sorry I couldn't find and english version) about a dual AMD unit from, of all people, VA Linux!!! Guess that one slipped through the slashbots, huh?

AMD is looking to bump out Intel in one of it's most valued markets, servers. I don't doubt for a second that they are working as hard as they can with the aftermarkets to put out a dual board. It will happen, and all indications point to it happening soon.

What about Intel?

[adipocere]

Rumor has it that you can make a quad proc box using Pentium IIIs instead of Pentium III Xeon processors. Any truth to this, hardware fans? I haven't been able to find anything out about this, and I'd rather not spend the money on a Xeon when I could spend it on the humble PIII.

It's comming

[Hawkeye_RC5]

AMD already showed off multi-processor boards at every big computer show (CeBit for example). Tyan (http://www.tyan.com) is their "primary partner" to develop motherboards based on the AMD760MP chipset.

This means that Tyan is the first, and for now, the only one that produces such boards. And they will not come cheap :( AMD wants to do it right from the first time. Tyan already showed off a motherboard, with 6 64-bit PCI cards, integrated SCSI-160 connectors and other expensive sh!t.

First boards should start shipping to the big OEM's (Compaq, Fujitsu-Siemens, IBM) in June.

It's also difficult to implement dual Athlon processors, since the EV6 protocol used with the Athlons is a point to point bus, meaning every processor will get full access to the Front Side Bus (the opposite of the GTL+ bus of Intel, where every processor must share the same FSB). Ofcourse, this gives you MUCH higher performance, but at the same time, the tracecount rises dramaticly. Therefore, all dual-CPU Athlon boards will come on an 8-layer PCB. That's way higher than the 4-layer PCB found on most motherboards now.

There are rumours though that it'll also be possible to implement the 760MP chip on a 6-layer design, but face it, due to the added traces, boards will be exponentially more expensive than the current Dual Processor boards (based on Via Apollo Pro and BX chipsets) for Intel CPU's right now...

So, to answer your question, first boards should be shipping in June, but they are not meant for the average Joe, and I think that near the end of the year, we will see 'affordable' Dual-CPU Ahtlon motherboards.

This is a bit off-topic, but I do want to tell you that I recently read on aceshardware, that AMD does NOT advice you to use the current ThunderBird and Duron processors with the 760MP chipset. It might work, but then again, it might not. Palomino is the only CPU supported by AMD to do multiprocessing on the 760MP chipset...

Be AMAZED! 2X AMD 2Ghz Tyan Motherboard Benchmarks

[Cancerman1996]

http://www.2cpu.com/tyan_dual_2ghz.html