AMD is offering disc imaging stability for its 64-bit chips- in essence a promise not to muck about with hardware so that corporates can guarantee they won't start having installation nightmares becauses of small changes to hardware.

The chip maker is working with card and motherboard providers and promising no changes from 1 September for fifteen months. For any company buying a lot of machines, or for an Original Equipment Manufacturer, that means they can guarantee hassle-free installations and that hardware and software won't develop unpleasant incompatibilities. It means you can put exactly the same bundle of applications, drivers and operating system onto any machine and be certain there won't be problems.

AMD is working with card makers ATI, Atheros, Broadcom and NVIDIA as well as motherboard makers ASUS, ECS, GIGABYTE and MSI. The Commercial Stable Image Platform Program began 1 September but first motherboards are not expected until the fourth quarter.

The CSIP program covers Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors, Athlon 64 processors and Turion 64 mobile chips.

Intel announced a similar programme in May.

Press release from AMD is here. ®