AMD is no stranger to using busses and sockets that are compatible with "other" hardware.
The original Athlon was bus-compatible with DEC Alpha chips - some logic boards could take either with a firmware upgrade.
Also, there have been FPGA's that slot into Opteron logic boards (Celoxica made one around 2006), and various other chips that connect directly to the hypertransport bus as accelerators.
It remains to be seen what they'll do with this. Will it be a Xeon Phi competitor (lots of cores, high thermal footprint) or something aimed at lower end uses.
Comments
AMD is no stranger to using busses and sockets that are compatible with "other" hardware.
The original Athlon was bus-compatible with DEC Alpha chips - some logic boards could take either with a firmware upgrade.
Also, there have been FPGA's that slot into Opteron logic boards (Celoxica made one around 2006), and various other chips that connect directly to the hypertransport bus as accelerators.
It remains to be seen what they'll do with this. Will it be a Xeon Phi competitor (lots of cores, high thermal footprint) or something aimed at lower end uses.