CPUs, chipsets and competition – the VIA interview

Posted at: 4:39pm 11th August 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

Multi-core Nano CPUs are due next year, and VIA will now focus on CPUs rather than chipsets. We catch up with VIA’s Richard Brown in Taiwan to chat about what the future holds for VIA

One of the last remaining companies with an x86 license, VIA is one of the few firms that can realistically compete with Intel, along with AMD. Not only can VIA make CPUs, but it also has a wealth of expertise in chipset design, not to mention high-end audio chips and integrated motherboards. VIA’s new Nano CPU is already grabbing plenty of headlines with its fast floating point unit and low TDP, so we want to know what’s happening next.

Are there going to be high-end Isaiah-based desktop CPUs? When will we see multi-core Nano chips? How’s VIA getting on with Nvidia now? To find out, we caught up with VIA’s vice president of corporate marketing in Taiwan, Richard Brown, to chat about VIA's strategy for CPUs, chipsets and competition.


On Nano and Isaiah...

CPC: You’ve recently revealed a line of integrated Nano-based Mini-ITX boards, but will the Nano processor ever be made available separately and, if so, what socket will it use?

Richard: As with the VIA C7, the VIA Nano processor will not be sold as a discrete part in end user or system integration channels, but will be integrated directly onto the motherboard by our customers. We did recently send out some Mini-ITX reference boards for media review but have not yet officially announced commercially available boards. Expect to hear more news on this later this year.

CPC: VIA claims that the Isaiah architecture has ‘the world’s fastest floating point.’ This marks a big shift from the previous VIA and Cyrix processors which had comparatively slow FPUs. What made VIA re-evaluate the importance of the FPU?

Richard: Yes, the VIA Nano’s floating point – able to execute four floating-point adds and four floating-point multiplies every clock, resulting in the lowest floating-point add/multiply latency of any x86 processor - is something we are all extremely proud of.

However, to say that we’ve re-evaluated the importance of the FPU is not entirely accurate. Floating point has always been a key factor in a processor’s performance, and although we recognised this, it was difficult with the VIA C7 processor architecture to increase the FPU performance while keeping the power draw to the very low levels for which the VIA C7 is known. With the VIA Nano’s new architecture, we’ve been able to successfully marry the high FPU performance with a very low TDP.

CPC: Does VIA have plans for multi-core Isaiah-based chips?

Richard: The VIA Nano processor has been architected to be dual-core, although we chose to concentrate on the single-core design for our first generation of parts. Expect to see dual-core VIA Nano processors some time in 2009.