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All Socket A Athlons and Durons are multiprocessing enabled. They only require a new chipset to do so. AMD is developing the 760MP for this purpose. It will also support DDR SDRAM. This topic will be discussed in much detail at the Microprocessor Forum next week. VIA may or may not develope a multiprocessor capable chipset for AMD processors. Hotrail was developing a chipset that would support 4 and more processors, but they dropped the project. I'll be covering all news of the 760MP next week at AMDZone, and expect Tuesday to be the big news day if you are interested in the 760MP. There should be a load of new information, and possibly a press release or two.

Here are the links working this time :-/
HotRail
and
Article

The company that AMD had licensed the Athlon bus to was HotRail, formerly Poseidon Technology, decided in June that it was no longer profitable to remain in the PC chipset business, and put their 8-way chipset on the back burner, in order to focus all their strenghs on Networking switches and transceivers.
<a href="http://www.ebnonline.com/ecomponents/commnew s/story/OEG20000501S0051">Here</a& gt; is an article about their switch of plans

Hotrail have had an SMP chipset for the Athlon available for some time - I just can't find anybody who is using it yet. There were mentions of IBM and others on their site but just no info. SG

The AMD-750 chipset doesn't do SMP, and neither does Via's new KX133 chipset -- the chip itself is ready for multiprocessor configurations, but nobody's made it feasible yet, and don't expect it for a while.

I think it will be this year.

Neither AMD nor VIA have announced a SMP chipset (AMD has stated the 750 is the only one they intend to do, they want other compines to to the "real" chipsets). I'm supprised VIA hasn't announced since they have done SMP PPro and other chipsets in the past.

That doesn't mean nobody is making them. Both Hotrail, and API (URL unknown) have announced SMP chipsets. They have given no firm dates that I know of. Hotrail initally said "in 2000", now they are saying in the second half, I think. They havn't blown a promised date yet, but they havn't made any strong promises.

Again I know nothing about API, but Hotrail has made noide about 2-way, 4-way, 8-way, and "more". Also there is the dark horse of Compaq, after all they have SMP (and much bigger then 8-way!) systems using the same bus, but with a diffrent form factor, and possably diffrent speed and voltage.

I don't know if it was a mistake for AMD not to do a sample multi-CPU chipset. Having a SMP chipset would let them sell more CPUs, and high-margin ones if they convince motherboard makers that it is too much trubble to get the non-Ultra Athalons to run more then two-way (they are claiming it is possable, but eletrical tolerences will be very tight, and for some reason it is easier with the Ultras).

Now, if AMD can come out with a chipset/motherboard that has 4-8 slots, AND I can stick the "commodity" (ie non-Ultra) Athalons in it, well, then, GoodBye Intel! AMD needs to realize that there is a huge opportunity here at the P3 / Xeon split, a place that they can heavily exploit.

I think AMD is pretty aware of this. After all they went to great effort to get a good SMP bus from Digital (now Compaq). However they don't make motherboards. They don't even want to be in the motherbord chipset bisness. In some ways both of these things are good. In other ways it is bad, mostly in reducing their time to market.

Look to Hotrail (I think that is a new compony name, was Posidon, or some other sea related name) for SMP chipsets. I heard they were trying to do 4-way, 8-way and 16-way ones. 4-way and maybe 8-way to be out first half of next year. I think. Ah, wait they say late 1999 for 4 and 8 way K7's.

Just in case I'm not totally clear here, what I want is to be able to use the SAME CPU from the low-end machines to the high end ones. Now, I know I'll get better performance by buying the Athalon Ultras (much more L2 cache), but I'd at least like the option of using the base Athalons, rather than be forced to use the more expensive chips, just because the manufacture want me to (that's the reason for the Slot1 vs Slot2 division - it's a pure Intel marketing decision).

As far as I know all the K7's are SMP capable. However the Ultra's are not just bigger cached non-Ultras. They also run the point to point bus faster, which means more memory bandwidth. I think they are planning on running it twice as fast as the non-Ultra K7's. Which means the extra bus traffic won't hurt as much.

The faster bus speed requires a cleaner eletrical enviroment the the lower bus speed. That is provided by the "Slot B" systems (shorter strighter traces I guess). Acording to AMD one could make a Slot A system that clean, but it isn't part of the Slot A specs AND costs more, so it is unlikely to be done on the Slot A systems.

My guess is you will see 2-way K7 systems, and 4-way K7 ultra systems, and later some 4-way K7's, but no 8-way or 16-way non Ultra systems. Of corse if there is a market for 8 and 16 way non-Ultra systems it doesn't look like AMD will stand in the way. It's not like the non-ultras were designed not to work in the SMP world, and it's not like the SMP chipset, or motherboards are made by AMD!!

Lastly when Intel first designed the Slot 1 vs. Slot 2 systems I thought that the PII Slot 1 module was too small to both hold the larger cache, and have enough extra cooling, which makes a real reason to have had Slot 2 in the first place. I assume that has gone away as SRAM tech has advanced.