The first SMP chipset for the AMD Athlon platform (hence the 'MP'). It is the first AMD chipset for the Athlon which is not intended to be phased out after suitable third-party replacements are available, unlike the 750 Irongate and AMD 760.
Allows any Socket A CPU to be operated in a dual-processor setup, but only the Palomino, AKA Athlon 4, AKA Athlon MP , AKA Athlon XP, works efficiently in tasks not tuned for SMP. The chipset itself consists of the AMD 762 northbridge and the AMD 766 southbridge. The northbridge supports advanced features such as DDR memory, 64-bit PCI, and AGP 4x/Pro.
The only currently shipping 760MP motherboard is the Tyan Thunder K7, which, although it has an amazing number of built-in components, is hideously expensive. Most motherboard manufacturers are waiting for the 768 southbridge which has a 66MHz link to the northbridge rather than a 33MHz link.
And the northbridge with its heatsink looks like a K6-2!
Update: July 6, 2002. The version of the 760MP with the 768 southbridge is officially called the AMD 760MPX. The only other motherboard released with the 760MP chipset was the Tyan Tiger K7, a stripped-down version of the Thunder K7.
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This writeup is copyright 2001-2002 D.G. Roberge and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial licence. Details can be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/2.0/ .