amd athelon chipset

AMD took a gamble with its Athlon and Duron processors. With these processors, AMD decided for the first time to create a chip that was Intel compatible with regards to software but not directly hardware or pin compatible. Whereas the K6 series would plug into the same Socket 7 that Intel designed for the Pentium processor line, the AMD Athlon and Duron would not be pin compatible with the Pentium II/III and Celeron chips. This also meant that AMD could not take advantage of the previously existing chipsets and motherboards when the Athlon and Duron were introduced; instead, AMD would have to either create its own chipsets and motherboards or find other companies who would. The gamble seems to have paid off. AMD bootstrapped the market by introducing its own chipset, referred to as the AMD-750 chipset (codenamed Irongate). The AMD 750 chipset consists of the 751 System Controller (North Bridge) and the 756 Peripheral Bus Controller (South Bridge). More recently, AMD introduced the AMD-760 chipset for the Athlon/Duron processors, which is the first major chipset on the market supporting DDR SDRAM for memory. It consists of two chips—the AMD-761 System Bus Controller (North Bridge) and the AMD-766 Peripheral Bus Controller (South Bridge). Other companies, such as VIA Technologies, NVIDIA, and SiS, have also introduced chipsets specifically designed for the Socket/Slot A processors from AMD. This has enabled the motherboard companies to make a variety of boards supporting these chips and the Athlon and Duron processors to takea fair amount of market share away from Intel in the process.