A year ago From The Register 8 May 1998 Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is set to take on Intel in the server market as sources close to the company confirmed today it has plans to produce symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) versions of its up-and-coming K7 technology next year. Intel has had its own way in the server market over the last 18 months as AMD struggled to launch and then produce its K6 processor. But the Alpha bus architecture AMD will use in its Slot A K7 processor next year, will allow manufacturers to produce machines and motherboards capable of SMP configurations. The source also said that while it was possible for AMD to configure the K6 to work in multiprocessor configurations, that is unlikely to happen. Instead, AMD will wait for its K7 and use the rest of 1998 to ramp up its K6 chip and launch its K6 3D (now called the K6-2) at the end of May. The other problem AMD has had is that Intel has more or less set the agenda for producing SMP chipsets. While Intel will license its technology to AMD, the price would be too high for the chip cloner to make any money from it. In other news from AMD, the company formally announced its public offering of shares to raise $450 million on the US stock markets. And as it prepares to launch its K6-2, AMD said today that it will co-sponser a Microsoft Windows DirectX seminar which starts tomorrow in the US. ®