Apple has joined a new consortium to promote and develop a technology called HyperTransport. HyperTransport is a technology used to make chips talk to each other faster, 48 times faster according to the consortiumis press release. Apple joins as a charter member, and as such will have access to all specs and be a part of ongoing management of the technology. The HyperTransport technology was originally invented by AMD and has been adopted by NVIDIA for their nForce next generation video cards.
A coalition of high-tech industry leaders today announced the formation of the HyperTransport Technology Consortium, a nonprofit corporation that supports the future development and adoption of AMDis HyperTransport I/O Link specification.
Technology leaders AMD, API NetWorks, Inc., Apple, Cisco Systems, NVIDIA Corporation, PMC-Sierra, Sun Microsystems, Inc., and Transmeta have joined together as promoters of HyperTransport technology, and will now manage the development and evolution of the technologyis specifications. More than 180 companies throughout the computer and communications industries have been engaged with AMD in working with the HyperTransport technology.
HyperTransport technology is an innovative solution that enables the chips inside of high-performance compute devices, and networking and communications devices - such as those that power the Internet - to communicate with each other up to 48 times faster compared with existing technologies.
The consortium was formed to promote the adoption and deployment of HyperTransport technology, manage and refine its specifications, and proliferate an infrastructure of test and verification tools to speed up market delivery of devices enabled with this technology. Product samples using HyperTransport are currently available, and other components are planned to be in volume production by the end of the year.
"Apple is delighted to participate as one of the leaders in the HyperTransport Technology Consortium," said Jon Rubinstein, Appleis senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. "HyperTransport represents a great technology with exciting future potential."
"NVIDIA was one of the first to incorporate HyperTransport technology into the market with the introduction of its new nForce platform processing architecture. As founding members of the consortium, we are committed to continue utilizing HyperTransport technology," said Dan Vivoli, vice president of marketing at NVIDIA.
About HyperTransport™ Technology
HyperTransport interconnect technology is a new high-speed, high-performance, point-to-point link for integrated circuits, developed to enable the chips inside of high-performance compute devices, networking and communications devices to communicate with each other faster than with existing technologies. HyperTransport technologyis bandwidth of 12.8GB/sec represents up to a 48-fold increase in data throughput, compared with existing system interconnects that typically provide bandwidth up to 266MB/sec. HyperTransport complements externally visible bus standards like the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), as well as emerging technologies like InfiniBand and 10Gb Ethernet.
About the HyperTransport™ Technology Consortium
The HyperTransport Technology Consortium is a nonprofit corporation controlled by its members. The consortium promotes the common business interests of providers to the networking, telecommunications, computer and high-performance embedded applications through the conduct of a forum for the future development and adoption of the HyperTransport specification.
AMD, API NetWorks, Apple Computers, Cisco Systems, NVIDIA, PMC-Sierra, Sun Microsystems, and Transmeta are the charter members that comprise the Executive Committee of the HyperTransport Technology Consortium.
The consortium is actively recruiting for new members, and you can find more information on the group at its Web site. The press release for this announcement contains a host of (useless) quotes from all of the participants (we left in Appleis and NVIDIAis), as well as more information on the consortium itself.
Thanks to Observer Ed M. for alerting us to this development.