... early last year, yes (Score 2)

SMP functionality for quake iii:arena was alluded
to over a year ago. you may want to look at the
may 19, 1999 update at

http://www.scs.ryerson.ca/~h2jang/trinity.html

for further details. and, yes, Carmack did
later mention some disappointment about the
"marginal" improvment of an n-processor
configuration over a single processor machine. but that was many months ago ... earlier in his research.

=-hin->