IBM, Texas Instruments, EMC and four other companies are joining the HyperTransport consortium this week, a move that will likely expand the places where the chip-to-chip connection gets used.

HyperTransport is a protocol that, when embodied in silicon, shuttles data at a high rate of speed--6.4 gigabytes to 12.8 gigabytes per second--between different chips in the same box. It could be used to link a microprocessor with a chipset that organizes input/output functions, for example, or two communications processors in a router.

Read more: CNet News.