VIA Technologies

VIA Technologies Inc.
威盛電子

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Computer hardware
Founded	1987
Headquarters	New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC
Products	Chipsets, motherboards, CPUs
Parent	Formosa Plastics Group
Website	VIA.com.tw

VIA Technologies Inc. (Chinese: 威盛電子; pinyin: Wēishèng Diànzǐ) is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory, and is part of the Formosa Plastics Group. It is the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. As a fabless semiconductor company, VIA conducts research and development of its chipsets in-house, then subcontracts the actual (silicon) manufacturing to third-party merchant foundries, such as TSMC.

History

The company was founded in 1987 in Fremont, California, USA by Cher Wang. In 1992 it was decided to move the headquarters to Taipei, Taiwan in order to establish closer partnerships with the substantial and growing IT manufacturing base in Taiwan and neighbouring China.^[1]

In 1999, VIA acquired most of Cyrix, then a division of National Semiconductor and also Integrated Device Technology from Centaur Technology, marking its entry into the x86 microprocessor market. VIA is the maker of the VIA C3 and VIA C7 processors, and the EPIA platform. The Cyrix MediaGX platform remained with National Semiconductor.

In 2001, VIA established the S3 Graphics joint venture.

In January 2005, VIA began the VIA pc-1 Initiative, to develop information and communication technology systems to benefit those with no access to computers or Internet. In February 2005, VIA celebrated production of the 100 millionth VIA AMD chipset.

On 29 August 2008, VIA announced that they would release official 2D accelerated Linux drivers for their chipsets, and would also release 3D accelerated drivers.^[2]

Products

VIA's business focuses on integrated chipsets for the PC market. Among PC users, VIA is best known for its motherboard (core-logic) chipsets. However, VIA's products include audio controllers, network/connectivity controllers, low-power CPUs, and even CD/DVD-writer chipsets. PC and peripheral vendors such as ASUS then buy the chipsets for inclusion into their own product brands.

In the late 1990s, VIA began diversifying its core-logic business, and the company has since made business acquisitions to form a CPU division, graphics division, and a sound division. As advances in silicon manufacturing continue to increase the level of integration and functionality in chipsets, VIA will need these divisions to remain competitive in the core-logic market.

Audio circuits

Circuit	Sampling rate		Resolution
	Digital	Analog	Digital	Analog
VT1613	96 kHz	96 kHz	20-bit	20-bit
VT1618	96 kHz	96 kHz	20-bit	20-bit
VT1708B	96 kHz	192 kHz	24-bit	24-bit

Processors

Series	Model	Core	Frequency [MHz]	Front Side Bus [MHz]	Year	Process [nm]	Die size [mm^2]	Power [W]	L2 Cache [K]	L1 I/D Cache [K]	Performance [SPEC2000]
Eden	Eden ESP	Samuel 2	300–600	66/100/133	2001	150	35×35	2.5–6	64	64/64
	Eden ESP	Nehemiah	667–1000	133/200	2003–2004	130	35×35	6–7	64	64/64
	Eden-N	Nehemiah	533–1000	133	2003	130	15×15	2.5–7	64	64/64
	Eden	Esther	400–1500	400–800	2006–2007	90	30	<7.5	128	32/32
	Eden X2	?	800	?	2011	40	11×6	?	?
C3	C3	Samuel 2	667–800	100–133	2001	150		13	64	64/64
	C3	Ezra	800–1000	100–133	2002	130		8.3–10	64	64/64
	C3	Nehemiah	1000–1400	133–200	2003	130	35×35	15–21	64	64/64
	C3-M	Nehemiah	1000–1400	133–200	2003	130	35×35	11–19	64	64/64
C7	C7-D	Esther	1500–1800	400	2006	90	21×21	20–25	128	16/16
	C7-M	Esther	1000–2000	400	2005	90	21×21	12–20	128	16/16
	C7	Esther	1500–2000	800	2007	90	21×21	12–20	128	16/16
QuadCore	QuadCore	Isaiah	1200+	1333	2011	40	2× 11×6	27.5	4× 1024[3]	4× 64/64	30.1/24.1 rate[4]
Series	Model	Core	Frequency [MHz]	Front Side Bus [MHz]	Year	Process [nm]	Die size [mm^2]	Power [W]	L2 Cache [K]	L1 I/D Cache [K]	Performance [SPEC2000]

VIA PadLock

The VIA PadLock Security Engine is implemented in some VIA x86 processors, which includes a hardware random number generator.^[5]

Chipsets

VX900

^[6]

Supported Processors VIA Nano™, VIA Nano 3000 Series™, VIA C7®-M processor, VIA Eden™ processors V4 protocol supporting 800/533/400MHz FSB Memory Controller Supports up to two unbuffered 32/64-bit DIMMs DDR3 1066MHz / DDR2 667 Unified Video Decoding Processor WMV / VC1 Video Decoding Mode VC-1 SP/MP/AP up to level 3.0 Accelerates AP@L3 from VLD or iDCT De-blocking filtering Adaptive macroblock quantization H.264 Decode Mode Accelerates MP@L4.1 H.264 Stream from VLD level Multi-mode, multi-reference MC Interlaced frame / MBAFF decoding CAVLC and CABAC support Inner loop de-block filter BP/MP/HP (CABAC or CAVLC) up to level 4.1 MPEG-2 decoding mode Fully compatible ISO/IEC spec in main profile Supports VLD XVID Interlaced frame decoding Supports 1/4 –pixel MC High Definition Audio Interface Up to 32-bit sample depth at 192 kHz sampling rate Supports three independent codecs streams Supports jack sensing and retasking Integrated 2D Graphics Processor 128-bit 2D engine with hardware rotation capability High Definition video processor with VMR capability Up to 256 MB frame buffer

Integrated 3D Graphics Processor 250MHz engine clock VIA Chrome9 HC3 – programmable DirectX 9 graphics engine 128-bit DX9 graphics engine with 2PS and 2VS Internal full ARGB for high rendering quality Display Support Dedicated CRT interface Single channel LVDS transmitter DVP1 to external HDMI/LVDS/DVI transmitter and TV encoder Multiplexed interface for DisplayPort/HDMI Multiplexed interface for DisplayPort/PCI Express Supports DuoView+ dual image capability Video Capture Port Parallel and serial Transport Stream inputs Supports 8-bit or 16-bit CCIR656/601 input External Hsync / Vsync support Supports HD resolution up to 1080i 60 or 1080p 30 Storage and Peripheral Interface 2 SATA 2.0 interface Support SD/MMC/MS/MS pro memory card interface Supports PCI-Express one 4-lane and two 1-lane ports Supports eight USB 2.0 ports Supports PCI and LPC buses Supports SDIO and SPI Supports four UART ports Power Management ACPI 3.0 and PCI Bus Power Management 1.1 compliant Extensive system power management

VN1000

^[7]

Market trends

VIA established itself as important supplier of PC components with its chipsets for Socket 7 platform. With the Apollo VP3 chipset VIA pioneered AGP support for Socket 7 processors.^[8] VIA's present market position derives from the success of its Pentium III chipsets. Intel discontinued the development of its SDRAM chipsets, and stated as policy that only RAMBUS memory would be supported going forward. Since RAMBUS was more expensive and offered few, if any, obvious performance advantages, manufacturers found they could ship performance-equivalent PCs at a lower cost by using VIA chipsets.

While historically VIA chipsets had suffered compatibility and performance issues, especially regarding AGP implementations, an internal program to raise standards had also begun, and VIA's fast and stable mature chipsets found market appeal, and profits soared. Many companies that had previously maintained Intel-only buying policies placed volume orders with VIA. Intel eventually restarted SDRAM development, and produced the 815 chipset, with 133 MHz SDRAM support and a 133 MHz Front Side Bus CPU interface. As NVIDIA came out with the powerful nForce2 chipset for the Athlon, VIA's market share started to decline. At the same time, VIA benefited from AMD's popular Athlon processor, for which VIA sold millions of chipsets.

In response to increasing market competition, VIA decided to buy out the ailing S3 Graphics business. While the Savage chipset was not fast enough to survive as a discrete solution, its low manufacturing cost made it an ideal integrated solution, as part of the VIA northbridge. Under VIA, the S3 brand has generally held onto a 10% share of the PC graphics market, behind Intel, ATI, and NVIDIA. VIA also includes the VIA Envy soundcard on its motherboards, which offers 24-bit sound.

While its Pentium 4 chipset designs have struggled to win market share, in the face of legal threats from Intel, the K8T800 chipset for the Athlon 64 has been popular.

VIA has also continued the development of its VIA C3 and VIA C7 processors, targeting small, light, low power applications, a market space in which VIA is successful. In January 2008, Via unveiled the VIA Nano, an 11 mm × 11 mm footprint VM-enabled x86-64 processor, which debuted in May 2008 for ultra-mobile PCs.

Legal issues

On the basis of the IDT Centaur acquisition,^[9] VIA appears to have come into possession of at least three patents, which cover key aspects of processor technology used by Intel. On the basis of the negotiating leverage these patents offered, in 2003 VIA arrived at an agreement with Intel that allowed for a ten year patent cross license, enabling VIA to continue to design and manufacture x86 compatible CPUs. VIA was also granted a three year grace period in which it could continue to use Intel socket infrastructure.

See also

• Mini-ITX
• Pico-ITX
• Nano-ITX
• NanoBook
• List of VIA chipsets
• List of VIA microprocessor cores

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to VIA.

• VIA Technologies (Taiwan)
• VIA Arena Homepage
• The 100 Millionth VIA AMD Chipset
• viagallery.com's photostream
• Palm-sized ZOTAC ZBOX Featuring VIA Nano X2
• ZOTAC ZBOX Nano Performance: VIA vs. AMD

VIA Technologies processors Cyrix III VIA C3 VIA C7 VIA Nano VIA Eden VIA CoreFusion VIA chipsets Centaur Technology WonderMedia