Semiconductor firm HotRail quietly announced at the end of last week that it would bale out of the high end PC chipset market, throwing AMD's six-way and eight-way server plans into some confusion. The firm was developing a high end server chipset for AMD and it is certain that it will now be forced to hunt around for another solution. Reliance, now called ServerWorks, could provide the necessary support for up and coming offerings targeting Intel's iron grip on the lucrative six way and eight way market. According to CBS Marketwatch, HotRail has exited the PC chipset market to concentrate on comms semiconductors. Since AMD announced the Athlon last year, it has made it clear that it intends not only to capture the high end desktop processor market, but to use that position to attack Intel not only in the notebook market but in the workstation and server markets too. Although AMD is succeeding in making inroads in capturing a chunk of the desktop business from Intel, aggravated by shortages from the chip giant, it acknowledges that it still has some way to go to gain corporate acceptance. Meanwhile, Ace's Hardware, quoting a Chinese-language CTech report, is saying that DDR memory, which AMD has adopted rather than use Rambus module with its high-end Athlons, will flood the market in the second half of this year, amounting to sales of as many as seven million chipsets. And US title Electronic Buyers' News reported on Friday that AMD is making attempts to widely licence its Lightning Data Transfer (LDT) bus technology. ®