Via Announces 1-Watt Processor for Mobile Devices
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Via's new processor is intended for use in mobile devices and embedded applications.
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PC Magazine - Via is shipping a Linux-friendly x86-compatible desktop processor, accompanied by a "Clean Computing Initiative" aimed at offsetting the chip's environmental cost. The C7-D clocks at 1.5GHz or 1.8GHz, and is shipping in an RoHS-compliant 21mm-square package.
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The new NAND chip design will increase throughput up to 5X
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Intel this week unveiled details on a new low-power processor, codenamed Silverthorne, for a class of pocketable, net-connected gadgets Intel is calling "mobile internet devices," or MIDs.
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New processor may increase battery life and lower prices of video-playing mobile phones.
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Dynamic RAM is enjoying a boost in mobile devices, which are hungry for small, cool, power-efficient chips.
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Via Technologies is not likely to ship its supersmall&#160;Mobile ITX motherboard, aimed at ultramobile PCs (UMPCs) and other light portable devices, in production volume until next year, company officials said here at the CES show Monday.The company attracted industry attention when it unveiled the board at Computex in Taipei last June, declaring that it would find its way into markets this year.But &quot;manufacturability issues&quot; will likely prevent the board from being used in commercially launched devices this year, according to Alp Sezen, a sales director for Via based in Fremont, California. Via expects to announce the Mobile ITX production schedule at this year&#39;s Computex, and will probably just manage to ship sample boards by the end of the fourth quarter, he said.&quot;It&#39;s normal to take about a year between announcing a board to production,&quot; he said. He acknowledged, however, that ultimately in the case of the Mobile ITX, the time between its unveiling and production is going to be more than 18 months.Like prototypes running last year, current Mobile ITX boards use 1GHZ CZ-M ULV (ultra low voltage processors) and CX700 chip sets. The board measures 7.5 centimeters by 4.5 cm -- smaller than a credit card -- and to get it that small, the spaces between the pins underneath the processor need to be shrunk to 0.5 millimeters from the current 1.0 millimeters in the company&#39;s current Pico ITX board, Sezen said.It&#39;s not easy to do this and ensure more than 90 percent of the boards coming off production lines are error free, Sezen said.Chip packaging technology needs to improve, he added. Via is a fabless chip developer and, on its own, faces difficulties developing new, cost-effective packaging technologies.In a sense, Via is dependent on Intel ramping up volume of new generation, 45-nanometer process chips. As Intel does so, new surface-mount technology for chips will be developed that can also be used to manufacture the Via Mobile ITX boards.Although the Mobile ITX is not likely to appear in UMPCs and other light portable devices until next year, the reduced package chip set incorporated into the board will likely be used in com modules for embedded systems by the end of this year, Sezen said. A manufacturer for these embedded systems is likely to make a public announcement this month, he said.Some would-be makers of new lightweight mobile devices, however, are chomping at the bit to get their hands on the new Via board. The MTube project, a research and development project sponsored by the Taiwan government&#39;s Science and Technology Group (STAG), was showing off a Linux-based, prototype Mobile Internet Device (MID) that incorporates the Mobile ITX board and measures 3.3 by 3.3 by 0.8 inches. It sported a 2.8-inch VGA touch screen and supports full rate video playback.The project wants to spin off from STAG and deliver a commercially available product as soon as it can get its hands on a motherboad with the specs that would make it viable, according to H.T. Kung, the project&#39;s advisor. However, to date, neither Via nor Intel could promise to deliver a commercially usable board within that timeframe, he said.&#160;
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The new Mobile AMD Athlon 64 processor 3000+ for thin and light notebooks enables a powerful 32-bit computing experience today with a seamless transition to 64-bit computing.
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Company says it will come out with 1-gigabit chip for mobile devices next year.
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(InfoWorld) - The unveiling of Via Technologies Inc.'s tiny Mobile ITX motherboard turned headsÂ at last week's Computex exhibitionÂ in Taipei. But what the company didn't announce was that prototypes of the board are already running Windows XP. C.J. Holthaus, a CPU engineer at Via, demonstrated a device using a working Mobile ITX prototype during an interview. The board, which has been functional for about a month, was housed inside a nondescript aluminum case sporting a touchscreen display and Wi-Fi antenna. In a demonstration, Holthaus showed the Mobile ITX system boot Windows XP and play a movie. The prototype system uses a 1GHz C7-M ULV (ultra low-voltage) processor and a CX700 chipset, but Holthaus said running a 2GHz processor with the board is no problem. The board can hold either 256M bytes or 512M bytes of DDR2 memory, but those numbers will rise as memory makers increase the capacity of their chips. Measuring 7.5 centimeters by 4.5 cm, the Mobile ITX motherboard is smaller than a credit card and is designed for use in lightweight, portable devices. In recent years, Via has led an industry shift towards smaller motherboards, starting with the introduction of the Mini-ITX form factor, which measured 17 cm by 17 cm. Looking ahead, the company is likely to push these limits further, developing boards smaller than the Mobile ITX. "In another year or two we will come out with even smaller form factors," Wenchi Chen, Via's CEO, promised last week in a speech at the Via Technology Forum, which was held alongside the Computex exhibition in Taipei.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Via Technologies&#39; upcoming Isaiah processor likely outperforms&#160;Intel&#39;s Silverthorne chip&#160;designed for mobile computers based on limited information about the chip that&#39;s been made available so far, according to the Isaiah&#39;s chief designer.&quot;Silverthorne is liable to be a little faster than our current C7 [processor], but the new Isaiah will be substantially faster than that,&quot; said Glenn Henry, president of Centaur Technology, the Via subsidiary that does processor design for the company.But don&#39;t look for Isaiah processors to match the performance of Intel&#39;s high-end processors, the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad.&quot;The Core 2 is going to be faster. Not massively so, but the Core 2 for performance is the fastest architecture in the world. It will be massively hotter too, and of course massively more expensive,&quot; Henry said.Announced Thursday, Isaiah is a 64-bit processor architecture that is significantly more powerful than the Esther cores used in Via&#39;s current line of C7 processors, while consuming the same amount of power. Single-core chips based on the Isaiah architecture will be available soon, with volume production using a 65-nanometer process expected by the end of June.Intel&#39;s Silverthorne processor is due for release&#160;around the same time. The chip is billed as an inexpensive, power-efficient processor that&#39;s ideal for ultraportable and handheld computers. Silverthorne is Intel&#39;s first chip designed for this product segment and will be the heart of Menlow, a chip package that pairs a processor with the company&#39;s Poulsbo chip set.The conclusion that Isaiah processors may outperform Silverthorne is based on the relatively small amount of information about Intel&#39;s chip that has been released. Most importantly, it assumes that Silverthorne and a related processor called Diamondville, designed for low-cost computers, use an in-order processor architecture instead of an out-of-order architecture.An in-order processor is similar to a factory with a single assembly line. The chip can only work on one operation at a time, and other operations must wait for the assembly line to clear before they can be processed. An out-of-order processor, like Isaiah and Intel&#39;s Core 2 chips, is equivalent to a factory with multiple assembly lines where different operations can be processed simultaneously.Other factors also come into play. Silverthorne likely has a substantially smaller cache than Isaiah processors -- which have 1MB of level 2 cache -- and could use a slower front-side bus, giving Via&#39;s chip an additional edge, Henry said.Silverthorne&#39;s performance will also be constrained by business considerations. &quot;They&#39;ve got to protect the high-end money makers in the Intel product line,&quot; Henry said.&quot;You don&#39;t want to make Silverthorne too good and you don&#39;t want to make it possible for someone to use a Silverthorne instead of a mobile Core 2,&quot; he said.Intel declined to answer detailed questions about Silverthorne&#39;s specifications and architecture, and it&#39;s possible the processor may confound Via&#39;s expectations when released. A true comparison of performance won&#39;t be possible until both chips are released and can be benchmarked by independent observers.&quot;It&#39;s very difficult to make an assessment given that Intel hasn&#39;t made a full disclosure on what Silverthorne is,&quot; said Dean McCarron, president of Mercury Research, a market research firm that tracks the microprocessor market.But there are signs the two chips could be closely matched.&quot;The description of the two components, both Silverthorne and [Isaiah], that we know to date would seem to put them in the same general class,&quot; he said, noting that some versions of Silverthorne and Diamondville are expected to ship with two processor cores, while others will have a single core, like Isaiah.&quot;From what has come out, Silverthorne is rumored to be an in-order machine,&quot; McCarron said. &quot;But we haven&#39;t actually seen parts yet, and it&#39;s certainly possible that particular rumor might not be correct.&quot;Intel clearly aims to partition its product line and there will be a &quot;gap&quot; between Silverthorne and the Core 2 product line, McCarron said, noting this gap could be a difference in processor performance or architectural restrictions that limit the features and capabilities offered with Silverthorne.&quot;It&#39;s very safe to say that the Silverthorne products will be positioned in such a way that they would not threaten products above them in the product stack that Intel has,&quot; he said.
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Via Technologies Friday announced the introduction of its K8T890 PCI Express chipset for Advanced Micro Devices&#39; (AMD) 64-bit processors.
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AMD uses a technology called PowerNow to control power supply to the processor depending upon how much of the processing power is being used.
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I was pretty amazed to see 3D graphics coming to mobile phones, and now it looks like TV is coming to them too! Texas Instruments has started work on a chip that
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The speedy GeForce Go 6800 mobile graphics chip from NVidia helps power high-end, wide-screen notebooks. Plus: new Microsoft accounting software.
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Computers built with Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processor soon will be able to take advantage of the same power management technology the company has already built into its laptop and desktop microchips.
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SAN FRANCISCO Advanced Micro Devices has brought forward a demonstration of its version of a new approach to processor design, with a chip that is expected to offer faster computing and relatively less power consumption.