Meet the Via Nano

VIA IS OFFICIALLY announcing the productised CN/Isaiah architecture, now called the Via Nano. Most of the technical details can be found here, today is all about what you can buy, not what they made.

The first thing you will notice is the new logo, something rather spiffy. It looks like this.

Not that bad, eh?

There are five SKUs coming out in two series this time around, a 1.0, 1.2, 1.3, 1.6 and 1.8GHz. The bottom 3 are the U- series for Ultra Low Voltage and the top two are the L- series for Low Voltage. The exact breakdown is as follows.

All the Nanos you will need

We are told that 7W or less is considered fanless, so that would put the 1.0 and 1.2GHz parts in those designs with the 1.3 needing some kind of active cooling. Given that the TDPs are usually specced conservatively, you could probably get away with the 1.3 in fanless designs as well.

Mine doesn't have the logo :(

Luckily, the Nano is drop-in compatible with the older C7. It gives about a 2x performance improvement clock for clock with a slightly higher TDP. The TDPs were chosen so the Nano would fit in most C7 devices as is, so you will probably see such devices on the market in short order. Given that the Nano has much higher performance on multimedia type apps, look for them in graphics and AV oriented devices sooner rather than later.

They are sampling now, with devices to come out for customer purchase in Q3. No price was given, but considering that most of them come soldered to boards or devices, that isn't really a problem for most buyers, they will just get a 'Nano Powered' widget, not a Nano and a widget with an open socket.

Overall, Via hit a rather sweet spot in the market with the Nano. It slots in between the Atom on the low end, and the Core Number Numeral on the high. The platform is in the middle in performance, power and far below Intel on price. There is a hole in the market, and Via looks to have filled it quite nicely. µ