Competition is a prime motivator for innovation. If Intel were the only CPU and chipset maker in the market, CPU and chipset technology would likely be years behind what it is today. But fortunately, Intel is not the only strong player. Over the past few years, AMD has been the competition that has driven Intel to innovate in the CPU market. And over the past year, VIA has been the competition that has driven Intel to innovate in the chipset market.

This roadmap shows what we believe AMD's future plans to be for their CPUs and chipsets. It also shows what we believe VIA's future plans to be for their chipsets for both AMD and Intel CPUs. And where appropriate, we will show the plans in relationship to past and current products. We compiled this roadmap after speaking with multiple sources close to AMD and VIA at COMPUTEX Taipei 2000. We then compared our sources' information and filtered it through our own knowledge to bring you this roadmap.

And remember as you read, plans change. Changing market conditions require companies to adapt. These are what we believe to be AMD and VIA's current plans. We will start with what we see are major trends in the roadmaps, then we will move on to give specifics about each of the planned processors and chipsets.