By licensing the 200MHz+ EV6 Alpha system bus from Digital, AMD almost instantly solved many of the input/output problems that plague current multiprocessor systems.

Here's a little about EV6 from AMD's literature concerning the Athlon's system bus:

"For example, if there are four Intel processors sharing a 100MHz Intel P6 bus capable of delivering 800MB/s of data bandwidth, each processor is limited to just 200MB/s of data bandwidth. With AMD's point to point bus topography, each Athlon processor in a four way system configuration has up to 1.6GB/s of data bandwidth".

This statement assumes that the Intel rig is using the current 100MHz front side bus standard while the Athlon setup theoretically utilizes its stock 200MHz implementation of the EV6 bus (all Athlons will ship using a 200MHz system bus in 1999, faster bus speeds are slated for next year.)

Still, the amount of forethought that went into the Athlon's system bus plans is impressive, it's almost as if they've put down a large engineering deposit into a technology that will only begin to pay off on the investment when multiprocessor Athlon systems begin shipping next year.