Roadmap Via

At the recent Platform Conference, AMD displayed an early version of a Tyan motherboard bearing room for two Socket A processors. Yes, it was a board with AMD's 760MP chipset. At this time, VIA does not have an equivalent chipset in the works. AMD is rolling out their 760MP in a very limited fashion, starting with only Tyan, sometime in mid-2001. VIA is going to wait for AMD to prove themselves before committing to a MP Athlon chipset.

Unlike the MP Pentium chipsets VIA makes, making an AMD MP chipset is a bit more difficult. The EV6 bus is much quicker than Intel's P6 bus, but it is also point-to-point, meaning AMD's bus can only connect two components, the processor and the northbridge, not two processors and the northbridge like Intel's shared bus can. So in order to make an MP Athlon chipset, AMD had to put two EV6 busses. This increases the chipset die size and pin count, which thereby increases the chipset's cost. AMD has a shared bus architecture relying on LDT planned for their K8 series processors.

We frankly expect AMD to meet with some success with their MP chipset. Still, we're not sure whether they will meet with enough success to convince VIA to develop their own solution. Only time will tell.