The speed of computer components is getting faster and faster. The current bandwidth, between Northbridge and Southbridge, causes a data bottleneck of computer performance. Computer processing performance will increase dramatically by removing the bottleneck of bandwidth. The chart below shows the different bandwidths provided by several common use interfaces. Compared with next generation I/O technology, the bandwidth are relatively small
HyperTransport Technology
HyperTransport technology, an innovative design, which is an upgradeable, advanced high-speed, high-performance, point-to-point link for integrated circuits. It features high speed serial-links with widths of 4, 8, 16, and 32 bits and provides total bandwidth of 12.8 GB/second to support multiple GHz+ 64-bit processors and emerging I/O technologies such as InfiniBand of Intel and 10 Gigabit Ethernet. HyperTransport is more of a protocol than a set physical interface, and it can be updated as needed for new applications. In the HyperTransport protocol, data are segmented into data blocks or packets. Each data block can be up to 64 bytes long.
HyperTransport technology is helpful in reducing the number of buses within the system and provides a high-performance link for embedded applications. With HyperTransport technology, the chips inside of PCs (networking and communications devices to communicate with each other) can accelerate up to 40 times faster than existing technologies. HyperTransport is specially designed to work while chip scale down below .13 micron technology.
The goal of HyperTransport is not to replace other I/O technologies, but rather to provide a highly standardized chip-to-chip interconnect that meets the data transfer requirements of memory and I/O elements, but can also easily connect to both low speed traditional I/O devices and high speed new media I/O channels.
The Future of HyperTransport Technology
Today, AMD, Apple, Broadcom Corporation, Cisco System, nVIDIA, SGI, Sun Microsystem and Transmeta have led a consortium of industry leaders in developing HyperTransport technology. HyperTransport technology has gained powerful industry support due to its backwards compatibility to PCI based systems. HyperTransport technology allows manufacturers of network equipment to immediately extend the number of ports and the bandwidth of their equipment with little or no software or architecture changes. The era of HyperTransport has arrived.