That firecracker CEO of Nvidia, Jen-Hsun Huang, has revealed that Nvidia will be putting out an “Ion 2″ platform using VIA Nano processors instead of Intel’s Atoms. The pairing isn’t surprising, considering that the Nano processors are supposed to be quite as capable as Atoms, and Nvidia’s relationship with Intel right now isn’t exactly all fun and games. → Read More
We may see Lenovo netbooks packing NVIDIA and VIA chips pretty soon here. Digitimes is reporting that “Lenovo plans to launch 11.6-inch and 12.1-inch netbooks combining Intel’s Atom processor and Nvidia’s Ion platform in the second quarter of this year.” → Read More
12 inch Netbooks are coming. Dell has the Inspiron Mini 12, Samsung will unveil its 12 inch netbook model to the U.S. shortly, and more are coming. And Intel isn’t happy about this at all.
In fact, the whole Netbook market may be making them nervous. Despite the fact that they power most of these devices with their new Atom chip that handles some PC chores well and uses a lot less power (so batteries are smaller and last longer). Intel sees Netbooks as devices for people who can’t afford normal laptops, or as second devices. But it’s clear that a lot of people are buying them instead of normal dual core machines, despite their very serious limitations.
That means that for the most part, every Netbook sold is one less Dual Core that Intel can sell at a higher price and higher margin. Which explains exactly why the company has been publicly criticizing the performance of the machines. “If you’ve ever used a Netbook and used a 10-inch screen size–it’s fine for an hour. It’s not something you’re going to use day in and day out,” said Intel VP Stu Pann at an event last year. → Read More
Word on the (Italian) street is that Samsung will be releasing the NC20 netbook sometime around February. It’ll be a netbook like the NC10 except it’ll have a nice, big 12.1-inch screen and it’ll swap out the Intel Atom processor for the new VIA nano CPU. → Read More
Looks like the motherboard business has lost its luster for VIA. Custom PC is reporting that VIA "sees no future in making chipsets for third parties such as Intel and AMD." A VIA rep said that one of the main reasons the company moved into the processor business was because it saw the third-party chipset business becoming less important against providing a complete all-in-one platform. This move is a little surprising as VIA has been a pretty big player in the motherboard market but we’re seeing more and more complete platform offerings nowadays, so the tides seem to be turning. There are still plenty of third-party motherboard manufacturers to pick up the slack, although it’s interesting to see some of those companies getting into building things like netbooks — companies like ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI come to mind. [via Slashdot] → Read More
We’re all hearing a lot about Intel’s Atom range of processors these days, likely because of the tiny laptop revolution (or whatever you want to call it). While VIA’s Nano is not competing directly with Atom as, say, GeForce does with Radeon, they are in the same ballpark and when it comes to low-power, general-purpose setups for things like tiny laptops or tablets, people are going to talk about Nano and Atom as competitors. HardOCP took a look at the two to see how they’d do in various situations. With a bare bones setup (just a compatible mini motherboard and a gig of RAM) they compared the two in both synthetic and real-world applications. Intel’s been ruling the CPU roost these days so it came as a surprise to me when their touted Atom platform got its ass handed to it by pretty much every measure. Pure number crunching, desktop environment, video encoding, it got whupped pretty much all over town. These were essentially desktop setups and it’s difficult to extend the testing to the market, where demands on the systems are so varied. But it’s fun to know that Intel is getting schooled somewhere. → Read More
It’s not exactly a revolution in computing, but the fact that the game appears somewhat playable on a setup with such a small form factor is nice. They’ve got a PCI Express x16 slot for the GeForce card they’re using, and the Nano processor seems to be pulling its weight nicely as well. The idea, I think, is that basically you’ve got nearly every benefit of a larger form factor but obviously in a much smaller package. Skip to about the 2 minute mark to see the game actually being played. [via TechnoVoyance] → Read More
VIA’s 64-bit “Isaiah” processor, which we’ve reported here and here, has now been made official, taking on the “Nano” moniker. The chip uses a 65-nanometer process, measures 21mm x 21mm, and uses the same socket as existing VIA C7 processors, which should make things easier on OEMs. It’s being pitched for more mainstream desktop and laptop platforms, squaring off against Intel and AMD. “In particular, the VIA Nano processor places significant emphasis on high-performance floating-point execution, using a completely new algorithm for floating-point adds that results in the lowest floating-point add latency of any x86 processor. Similarly, the floating-point multiplier has the lowest latency of any x86 processor. In practical terms, this means the VIA Nano processor provides exceptionally smooth play back of Blu-ray Disc™ and other HD video formats, which can have encrypted media streams of up to 40Mbps, in addition to its robust two-clock FPU multiply and 128 bit data path offering an excellent gaming experience, providing silky smooth rendering of 3D images.” Clock speeds range from 1.0GHz to 1.8GHz, so it won’t eat into premium offerings from Intel and AMD, but it might be able to take a chunk out of the lower-end stuff. More info here. → Read More
Do you own a small fabricating plant in Taiwan? Do you have an engineering team of ten PhDs? Do you want to make small laptops? Has VIA got a deal for you. The VIA OpenBook reference design is not actually a product — it’s more of an idea. Because it is ostensibly open (the CAD plans are available on the VIAOpenBook site) you simply buy the chips from VIA and use the plans to build your own cases, keyboards, and I/O systems. What does this mean to you and me? Not much, unless we want to mill our own laptop parts out of plastic. VIA isn’t really selling anything here other than its own motherboards and chips. The laptop portion is a bit of lip service to openness that corporations like to pay just to get their piece of the “open” mindshare. While the potential is there — mini laptops with powerful features hand-crafted by Cuban virgins out of sandalwood and jade come to mind — let’s just call this an advertisement for a mobile computing platform and leave it at that. → Read More
They were still taking bets when I heard about this about a week ago, but now the challenge has begun. For those of you not in the know, Technovoyance and VIA doing a stunt right now where they’re running this super-efficient little Pico-ITX chipset with no fans, no heatsink or anything until it croaks. They took bets from people on how long it would go with the prize being a build kit of said chipset. They’ve got Ubuntu 8.04 on there and they’re looping an mp4 video to tax the processor and video card. Unfortunately it’s a VIA demo of the chipset, and not something interesting like, say, “Never gonna give you up.” In any case, the live stream is here so you can keep an eye on it. I’m guessing it’s going to go a good long time before crapping out.; we’ll keep you posted. → Read More
Look out Intel and AMD, there’s a new kid on the block. He comes from the wrong side of the tracks, kicked out of his former school for staying out at recess long after the bell rang. His name’s Isaiah and he’s gunning for the both of you. Something like that, anyway. The Isaiah chip by VIA will be here later this month and will be aimed at regular notebooks and desktops. VIA’s C7 processor has been somewhat popular with lower-end notebooks and things like fanless media center PCs and car PCs. The Isaiah chip, though, will be interesting to watch, as VIA’s formed a partnership with NVIDIA for an embedded platform that costs less than $50 but is capable of running Vista. via CNET → Read More
