Seven Industry Leaders joining HyperTransport Consortium

The HyperTransport Technology Consortium, the nonprofit industry organization that manages the HyperTransport technology specification, today announced that seven industry leaders and two academic institutions have joined the Consortium. The new industry members include EMC, IBM, LTX, Media Fusion, National Semiconductor, Network Appliance and Texas Instruments

HyperTransport is one of many I/O technologies that is rapidly becoming a standard chip-to-chip communications technology for high-performance processors and subsystems," stated Lisa Su, director of Power PC and emerging products at IBM Microelectronics. "We are pleased to provide HyperTransport along with other leading I/O technologies to our customers requiring low latency and high bandwidth."

"HyperTransport technology is gaining traction in the marketplace as the first of the high-bandwidth I/O technologies to reach volume shipments," says Jim Turley, senior analyst at SiliconInsider. "With major industry participants such as IBM, National Semiconductor and Texas Instruments joining the Consortium, it seems that the Consortium has widened its reach across the entire semiconductor industry. With system makers like EMC on board, it is likely that any new developments will support computing, communications and storage needs from both a chip and system-level perspective."

HyperTransport technology is licensed on a royalty-free basis through the HyperTransport Technology Consortium. It is a universal chip-to-chip I/O connectivity technology that provides extremely high bandwidth, frequency scalability, low-cost implementation and full software compatibility with the legacy Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) and PCI-X I/O technologies.

With over 45 HyperTransport technology-based products and services already announced, a Compatibility Program that ensures interoperability between devices, and the specification's preservation of the vast software investments and infrastructure that already exist for PCI today, HyperTransport technology has established a significant footprint in a number of key market segments

Companies using this technology include : ALI, AMD, Broadcom, NVIDIA, VIA, and many others.

What is HyperTransport Technology?
HyperTransport universal, royalty-free, chip-to-chip interconnect technology replaces and improves upon existing multilevel buses used in systems such as personal computers, servers and embedded systems while maintaining software compatibility with PCI I/O technology. HyperTransport technology delivers a maximum 12.8 GB/second aggregate bandwidth using easy to manufacture dual, unidirectional point-to-point links. Enhanced 1.2V low-power LVDS signaling and dual-data rate data transfers deliver increased data throughput while minimizing signal crosstalk and EMI. HyperTransport interconnect technology employs a packet-based data protocol to eliminate many sideband signals (control and command signals) and supports asymmetric, variable width data paths.