This is what I call a step in the right direction for AMD. The fact that companies like Sun and Cisco would use their technology in business machines is an important step towards changing their image as purely an "enthusiast" company. Granted, it would be nice from a bottom line stand point if they were making money from it as well but all in all this is still a good thing.

It should be noted that Intel will end up helping the use of HyperTransport as Microsoft's X-Box will have a Pentium 3 processor on an nVidia system board utilizing HyperTransport.

Be interesting to see how much Intel does in helping promote the X-Box in light of this.

Yes, but Intel has decided to push forward on 3GIO, and AMD has decided to work with them to that end, rather than agaist them. It's strange when these companies that are locked in a death match codevelope process technologies and support each other's initiatives.

That's probably the most interesting thing about this.......AMD has decided that they weren't going to position HyperTransport as a PCI replacement. In fact, they are a member of the PCI-SIG and voted in favor of 3GIO as the standard to replace PCI. Yet, Intel seems determined to position 3GIO as a direct competitor to HyperTransport.

I find this reasoning strange for two reasons. First, 3GIO is at least two years off as it is. By them, we'll probably have at least one revision of HyperTransport. How do you position a product that's at least two, perhaps three years off from arriving against technology that will be actively used once nForce is officially released? Moore's Law alone should be enough to make this kind of thinking useless. This brings me to my second point.

There seems to be this idea among members of the media, and even the head of PCI-SIG, that HyperTransport as a technology could very well have been a possible PCI replacement if AMD had decided to go that route. If it would be as seemingly simple as some have suggested, why would Intel want to antagonize a company that has a product out that only needs advising when they're a long way off from actually releasing their own product. Something about not waking sleeping bears comes to mind.....