AMD has thrown its hat into the multiprocessing ring with the Athlon MP processor and counterpart AMD-760 MP chip set, both heralding the company's moves into the workstation and server arenas. Intel has long offered multiprocessor-capable products, while AMD previously tackled the x86 giant only in the single-CPU market.

With this announcement coming on the heels of nVidia's new chip set for single-processor Athlon systems, the Intel-alternative AMD platform, which once occupied the fringes of the x86 market, is now in the spotlight.The new chips, however, have yet to prove themselves against the Intel Xeon Pentium 4 in multiprocessor configurations for shipping workstations and servers.

It's too early to call the Athlon MP a Xeon-killer--or even a contender. But with higher clock rates, more scalability, and wider company support on the horizon for the Athlon MP, Intel will certainly take heed of AMD's competition in this market.

Multiprocessing systems, which require operating systems and software to be written specifically for taking advantage of multiple chips, are a necessity for servers and workstations that perform intensive calculations. The new processor and chip set can support two-way multiprocessing systems and 1-GHz and 1.2-GHz clock rates. The chips have slightly larger die sizes and higher transistor counts to accommodate multiprocessing capability, yet they consume 20 percent less power than previous Athlon desktop chips, according to AMD.

AMD's new Smart MP technology accelerates the Athlon architecture for multiprocessing, enabling two processors to communicate and share the contents of their caches efficiently. Athlon MP systems will use dual point-to-point front-side busses borrowed from the Alpha architecture. These let the chips talk to memory more efficiently than ordinary shared busses do. They also allow work to continue while data requests to RAM are filled. The front-side busses to the CPUs each run at 266 MHz and provide 2.1 GBps of throughput (or 4.2 GBps total). The architecture can address up to 4GB of PC1600 or PC2100 DDR SDRAM and supports error correcting code (ECC) memory, important for essential corporate systems.

The AMD-760 MP chip set includes AGP 4X graphics and 33-MHz/32-bit/64-bit PCI capability. Its Southbridge technology supports legacy I/O, four USB ports, and ATA/100.

Athlon MPs use the same ZIF Socket as their single CPU brethren. But the chips require new motherboards. Tyan is shipping the only Athlon MP motherboard at launch, products from Asus, Abit, Gigabyte, and MSI are expected in the third quarter of this year.