AMD Announces Socket Compatibility Plans to Drive Industry Collaboration

Sunnyvale, Calif. – Sept. 21, 2006 – AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced
that its Torrenza Initiative is serving as a collaborative force toward
achieving future processor socket compatibility in the server industry.
By leveraging the advantages of AMD64 with Direct Connect Architecture
and HyperTransport(tm) technology, OEMs will be able to standardize on a
Torrenza Innovation Socket for many of their current and future server
platforms. This game-changing approach to server design will enable OEMs
to consolidate server offerings for multiple processors to potentially a
single platform, reducing datacenter disruption and deployment costs for
customers. The Torrenza initiative is establishing AMD64 as the Open
Innovation Platform.

Leading server OEMs that develop silicon or intend to design products
uniquely enabled by the Torrenza Initiative, including Cray, Fujitsu
Siemens Computers, HP, IBM, Dell and Sun Microsystems, have endorsed
Torrenza as an open innovation initiative, and plan to evaluate the
Torrenza Innovation Socket.

“This next phase in the Torrenza initiative would not be possible
without the enthusiasm and desire of our partners to enable open
innovation and greater collaboration across the computing ecosystem,”
said Marty Seyer, senior vice president, Commercial Segment, AMD.
“Together, we recognize that the impact of Torrenza can be far-reaching
across the industry in reducing complexity for customers while
increasing the pace of innovation both in silicon and platforms.
Datacenter managers will immediately recognize the impact of the
Torrenza open environment, and benefit from the enhanced cooperation at
the platform level, with new levels of platform stability,
upgradeability, flexibility, and capabilities for their server
infrastructure.”

The Torrenza Advantage

The Torrenza Innovation Socket enables OEMs who develop their own
silicon to take full advantage of an x86 environment and the
accompanying economics associated with packaging, chipsets and
motherboard designs. OEMs will be able to contribute to and obtain the
Torrenza Innovation Socket Specification and associated design
documentation.

“As a leader in the open movement, IBM applauds AMD for taking this
step and always welcomes partners that take an open and collaborative
approach to innovation,” said Bernie Meyerson, IBM Fellow and chief
technologist, IBM Systems & Technology Group. “By working with AMD and
joint clients such as Los Alamos National Laboratories, we are
collaborating to deliver new value by leveraging this open approach.”

“Sun sees incredible innovation opportunity associated with this latest
step in the Torrenza initiative across all of our product lines,” said
Mike Splain, chief technologist and CTO, Systems Group, Sun
Microsystems. “Developing silicon for the Torrenza Innovation Socket is
something we are currently evaluating for all Sun platforms as it
presents an interesting value proposition for leveraging volume
economics while giving our customers the growth flexibility they
require.”

“When combined with our HP BladeSystem Solutions Builder Program, the
AMD Torrenza initiative becomes a very effective way to deliver
high-value computing services to specialized market segments,” said
Dwight Barron, HP Fellow and chief technologist, BladeSystem Division,
HP. “The industry has been looking for a way to leverage
industry-standard, high-volume IT components to solve the next tier of
specialized computing problems, and HP sees this as a way to address
that need.”

“Supercomputing places heavy demands on performance and thus
innovation,” said Jan Silverman, Cray’s senior vice president of
corporate strategy and business development. “Our Adaptive
Supercomputing vision puts us on the edge of computer technology
advancements. With the Torrenza Innovation Socket and the emerging
Torrenza ecosystem, we can leverage additional innovations to extend the
realized performance people have come to expect from Cray.”

“Fujitsu Siemens Computers sees the value in AMD’s Torrenza initiative,
and has already developed technology for it. We are able to connect two
2-socket servers seamlessly, turning them into a 4-way, or 8-core SMP as
a result of Torrenza,” said Joseph Reger, CTO, Fujitsu Siemens
Computers. “Upgradeability of systems from 2-way to 8-core is a
Torrenza innovation from Fujitsu Siemens Computers that improves
customers’ server longevity, and reduces total cost of ownership.”

“Dell is excited about the open innovation approach provided by AMD. The
benefits of purpose-built processing elements complementing the AMD
Opteron processor are powerful,” said Kevin Kettler, Chief Technology
Officer, Dell. “The flexibility of Torrenza Initiative technology will
allow Dell to continue to deliver cutting edge solutions to our
enterprise customers.”

Through the Torrenza Initiative, the AMD64 computing platform is
opened for industry-wide innovation, such as connecting non-AMD
accelerators to AMD64 systems via HyperTransport technology links.
Torrenza supports a range of integration innovations from
interconnections leveraging HyperTransport, to co-processors accessing
HyperTransport, to plug-in co-processors that directly harness the speed
and communications delivered by HyperTransport.

About the AMD Opteron(tm) Processor

Today, 90 percent of the top 100 and more than 55 percent of the top 500
of the Forbes Global 2000 companies or their subsidiaries rely on AMD
Opteron processor-based systems. AMD Opteron processors deliver
exceptional performance and performance-per-watt to the market because
they are built on AMD64 technology with Direct Connect Architecture,
innovated to reduce bottlenecks inherent in traditional front-side bus
architectures and enable a more efficient approach to computing.