Big B
HWF Godfather
While it was discussed when the Athlon64 first hit, a refresher isn't a bad thing when it comes to the HyperTransport bus. HardwareSecrets has an article up giving the low-down on HTT for the n00b or as a refresher for the more seasoned guru. There's also some info regarding the upcoming HyperTransport 3.0 that should hit with Barcelona.
Besides providing AMD64 processors with separated datapaths for memory and I/O, HyperTransport brings another advantage: it provides separated links for the CPU input and output operations, allowing the CPU to transmit (“write”) and receive (“read”) I/O data at the same time (i.e. in parallel). On the traditional architecture using a single external bus since the external bus is used for both input and output operations reads and writes cannot be done at the same time.
Besides providing AMD64 processors with separated datapaths for memory and I/O, HyperTransport brings another advantage: it provides separated links for the CPU input and output operations, allowing the CPU to transmit (“write”) and receive (“read”) I/O data at the same time (i.e. in parallel). On the traditional architecture using a single external bus since the external bus is used for both input and output operations reads and writes cannot be done at the same time.