Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
The AMD-8000 chipset is often referred to as the
AMD-8151
because the AMD-8151
provides the connection between the Athlon 64 or Opteron processor and the AGP video
slot—the task usually performed by the North Bridge or MCH hub in other chipsets. The
name of the North Bridge or MCH hub chip is usually applied to the chipset. However,
AMD refers to the AMD-8151 chip as the AGP Graphics Tunnel chip because its only
task is to provide a high-speed connection to the AGP slot on the motherboard. The other
components of the AMD-8000 chipset include the AMD-8111 HyperTransport I/O hub
(South Bridge) and the AMD-8131 PCI-X Tunnel chip.
Due to delays in the development of the AMD-8151 AGP Graphics Tunnel chip, most
vendors through late 2003 used the AMD-8111 HyperTransport I/O hub alone or along
with the AMD-8131 PCI-X Tunnel chip to provide a mixture of PCI and PCI-X slots
on motherboards optimized as servers. Some recent systems have incorporated the
AMD-8151 chip to provide AGP video, but the AMD-8000 chipset continues to be used
primarily as a workstation/server chipset instead of as a desktop chipset.
The AMD-8151 AGP Graphics tunnel has the following major features:
• Supports AGP 2.0/3.0 (AGP 1x-8x) graphics cards
• 16-bit up/down HyperTransport connection to the processor
• 8-bit up/down HyperTransport connection to downstream chips
Following are the AMD-8111 HyperTransport I/O hub (South Bridge) chip's major fea-
tures:
• PCI 2.2-compliant PCI bus (32-bit, 33MHz) for up to eight devices
• AC'97 2.2 audio (six-channel)
• Six USB 1.1/2.0 ports (three controllers)
• Two ATA/IDE host adapters supporting up to ATA-133 speeds
• Real-time clock (RTC)
• LPC bus
• Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
• Eight-bit up/down HyperTransport connection to upstream chips
The AMD-8131 HyperTransport PCI-X tunnel chip's major features include these:
• Two PCI-X bridges (A and B) supporting up to five PCI bus masters each
• PCI-X transfer rates up to 133MHz
• PCI 2.2 33MHz and 66MHz transfer rates
• Independent operational modes and transfer rates for each bridge
