In the year 2006 the Computer Architecture Group (CAG) of the University of Mannheim took part in the famous International Supercomputer Conference in Dresden.
As academic partner of HP the CAG presented their recent research and development results: the HTX board. As exhibitor at the AMD and HP booth the board was shown to the community of experts in the field of high performance computing.
A fully-functional HyperTransport (HT) Core mapped to a Xilinx FPGA was demonstrated. The HT-protocol of the AMD Opteron processors is used for its interface. A dual CPU motherboard from Iwill with HTX slot was case modded to show the interior of the PC with the operational HTX board. The PC enclosure with the highlighted HTX logo was well received.
The design of the HTX-Board can be used as a rapid prototyping station for research and industry to speed up designs for the HTX Slot. The HTX Slot is standardized by the HyperTransport Consortium. This development also raised interest from this organisation and its representative, Mario Cavalli, was welcomed at the booth. Many interesting discussions with Mario succeeded on the development and future of HT. Professor José Duato, expert in the area of interconnection networks joined the CAG and Mario Cavalli for these conversations.
Many visitors of the booth showed high interest in the HTX board and the HT Core and the CAG will sustain the support of this technology.
Negotiations with Jay Ownes, the representative of AMD at the exhibition, resulted in a closer cooperation between AMD and CAG for the support of HyperTransport in research an industry.