AMD goes Torro on Torrenza open source socket

Stan Beer
Thursday, 21 September 2006 18:49

Your IT - Home IT

AMD, displaying a rare breed of initiative for a chip manufacturer has opened up the hardware specifications for its Opteron server processor, enabling other chipmakers to design co-processors that will be socket compatible with an Opteron motherboard.

• Announcements

The phenomenally successful Opteron server processor has been largely behind the rise of AMD as a major rival to Intel. The new initiative to open up the Opteron architectre to other chipmakers has been dubbed Torrenza.

Under the Torrenza vision of AMD, other chip maunfacturers would be able to design and manufacture co-processors that would be socket compatible with an Opteron motherboard. In one socket, there would be an AMD Opteron processor and in another socket a co-processor from another manufacturer.

AMD acquired graphics chipmaker ATI in July, an acknowledgement that one chip manufacturer cannot supply everything