SiS has let the cat out of the bag. Yesterday, it announced half a dozen chipsets all of which will support AMD's Socket AM2 microprocessors - none of which have yet been formally introduced by the chip maker - which will ship in Q2, SiS said.

SiS' AM2 line-up includes two desktop parts and four mobile chipsets, with one discrete offering in each category. The company said the chipsets would support AMD's Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64, Sempron and Opteron processors.

AMD AM2: More than just a Memory Change
The new AMD technology refresh, now called AM2, will bring DDR2 memory to the Athlon64 on-processor memory controller. Many in the industry have speculated about the impact of this low latency memory controller on DDR2 performance, which to this point has suffered under the impact of the higher latency Intel Netburst architecture. We are looking forward to the opportunity to take a closer look at DDR2 performance on AM2 - which is everyone's big question.

There will be more than just new memory with AM2, however. We now have details on the new Socket 940 for AM2. It has been widely reported that the new Socket 940 will not be compatible with the existing Socket 940 used for Opteron and early Athlon 64.

Photos of the back of the new AM2 processor show how very close the new design is to the current Socket 940.