SMP Athlons to take a little longer?
It seems that although the 760 chipset is nearly upon us, the 760MP is a little further than a stone's throw away..
For all the bad news surrounding Intel this week (leaked roadmaps, dodgy P4 performance reports), it does look as though AMD are also going to come under a bit of fire. German news-ticker Heise is reporting that the 760MP (the multi-processing 760 chipset) will not be with us until the middle of 2001. My German's a little rusty, but as far as I can tell, what the article is saying is that David Somo, Vice President of AMD marketing has told journalists in Paris that the world may have to wait until the middle of 2001 for the 760MP because, to paraphrase Mr. Somo, the chipset isn't terribly useful without a complete platform solution. Heise then goes on to hypothesize on AMD's reasoning, settling on the fact that in the heady workstation and server market, there's no space for unreliability. If a chip isn't 100% reliable, it will be replaced. In order to make absolutely sure of themselves, Heise say, the company is holding back. A demo board showing off the 760MP's power has already been exhibited to the press at the Microprocessor Forum, but it may be some time before we see the final product.