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.