dwards ISBN 0-471-65533-3 Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. NUTS AND BITS-TELECOM HARDWARE, SOFTWARE, AND MORE Yet raw speed isn't the only processor attribute that separates the latest PCs from their underpowered predecessors. New chip-oriented infrastruc- tures, such as Intel's Hyper-Threading and AMD's Hyper-Transport, promise to give PC users added power and convenience beyond a processor's basic clock speed. Hyper-Threading brings virtual parallel processing to a single CPU, allowing PCs to handle multiple tasks faster and without interruption. "You have one logical processor servicing whatever you're doing and one in background taking care of the maintenance tasks, such as virus scanning," says William Siu, general manager of Intel's desktop platforms group. Hyper-Threading debuted on the Pentium 4, and Windows XP and Linux both support Hyper-Threading. Although applications that take direct advantage of Hyper-Threading remain scarce, Intel claims that users running two standard CPU-intensive applications simultaneously can expect up to 25 percent faster execution. AMD's HyperTransport, on the other hand, is a high-performance bus that allows a PC's key system components to communicate with each other at speeds up to 50 times faster than the PCI bus currently used in most PCs. "It's designed to increase the speed of communication between the integrated cir- cuits in computers, telecom equipment, networking systems and SO on," says Deepa Doraiswamy, a semiconductor industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan, a technology research company located in San Antonio, Texas. According to the HyperTransport Consortium, over 45 HyperTransport products are already available, including CPUs, security processors, core logic and bridge devices, IP cores, and test equipment. Other significant PC architecture improvements include PCI Express (a faster and simpler serial-oriented version of the PCI bus that promises to reduce the size and cost of both plug-in cards and motherboards), Serial ATA (a high-speed storage i