AMD does not usually go big on designing its own chipsets: its making a big exception with Hammer, its so-called eighth generation 64-bit server CPU , with the 8000 series.

A fat CPU of course needs big bandwithd chipsets to maximise performance. AMD is trying to ensure no nasty bottlenecks with a liberal sprinkling of HyperTransport technology in its new chipset family.

This will include "the AMD-8111 HyperTransport I/O hub, the AMD-8131 HyperTransport PCI-X tunnel, and the AMD-8151(tm) HyperTransport AGP3.0 graphics tunnel".

An evolutionary CPU needs evolutionary chipset building blocks (evolutionary is AMD code for backwardly compatible with x.86/ in contrast to Intel's Itanium). Combine the two and you get a "massive improvement in overall performance".

For now we'll have to take AMD's word for this - as the chipsets will ship to OEMs in Q4, a little tight, maybe, for Hammer's anticipated debut at the back end of this year. But the timing of the announcement will take a little edge from Intel's expected announcement of two server chipsets at Intel Developer Forum next week. ®