- Monday, 9 November 2009
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IA32 is pushing elephants up steep hills - Bob Colwell, former chief architect at Intel
VIA announces Trinity
NOW THAT its love affair with Nvidia is officially over, VIA is back on its feet - sore knees and all - and in typical divorcee manner is affirming its independence by doing its own thing.
Unsurprisingly, after 'VIA Grace' and 'VIA Glory' the fabless company has come up with the 'VIA Trinity' - it's that time of the year again you see.
Via's divine inspiration combines a Nano or C7 processor with a VX800 'media system processor', that is, chipset, plus a discrete S3 Chrome HD-capable GPU, and is aimed at Hi-Definition media systems, Netbooks and MIDs. VIA says it's the world's only 3-chip solution featuring a discrete GPU. We guess VIA thinks Nvidia peddles its goods only on the Moon, then.
It probably took VIA all of 24 hours to bung these parts together and come up with something that resembles Nvidia's Ion, considering that Trinity is made up of bits and pieces that have been around for a while. Via has revealed no hard dates or pricing.
Now, here's a bit of tough love.
VIA has been trying to find a niche for Nano, but it hasn't found one. Don't get us wrong, the Nano seems to be a very good product. It blew away the assembled media at Computex 2008 but, that's just it. Computex 2009 isn't that far away now but Via still has no big design wins for Nano. We disregard Fujitsu, as it is Via's fabbing partner on the S3 and gets dibs on the hardware.
Overall, the company's recent history is one of pioneering designs but failing to capitalise on the technology. From form-factors to CPU designs, VIA has been there putting out very innovative products that in the end turn up in the hands of the competition in one way or the other. Here's a brief list: C3/C7 low power CPU, the Mini-ITX mainboard, VIA's embedded initiatives (EPIA), and examples just go on and on.
VIA might have more impact on the market - and on its own balance sheet - if it turns into a design company that only licences its innovations. It might just make a killing if it sticks to doing what it does best.
Still, we can see where Via's coming from. With netbook shipments expected to double in 2009, reaching 22.64 million units according to projections, netbooks look to be the next big thing, and VIA thinks it can make a buck. µ
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For me, deal breaker with VIA was unreasonably high price of their mini-itx solution and total lack of open source support for long time and for most part even today.
For many apps it had no sense to use that c*ap, when one can use off-the-shelf board and CPU, downclock and downvolt it and have final solution that is much cheaper, performs much better and runs Linux perfectly- so there are no OS fees...
Even with high prices, someone might go for it if the SW support had been flawless.
And their OS support was legendary even after they declared open sourcing drivers.
I expected that meant that source is available on some server.
It turned out I had to fill a very detailed questionaire about my identity and the reason for request, only to be denied access after review.
Seriously, where is a nano based netbook that I can buy in the US? How is VIA going to jump in on the netbook phenomenon if they don't start selling their processor. I have been waiting on the thing for 6 months now.
That's great guys, just compare business back and forths to lurid gossip-page smut. Why not imply sexual favours were involved too; after all that's what everyone else is thinking about when they read about what company did some work with what other company. Hey, maybe you can make up nicknames for some of the companies so that they sound like villains out of sci-fi films.
The author seems to imply that Nvidia makes a CPU
FTA:
Netbooks and MIDs. VIA says it's the world's only 3-chip solution featuring a discrete GPU. We guess VIA thinks Nvidia peddles its goods only on the Moon, then.
Via offers a 3 chip solution. Cpu, Single chip NB/SB, discreet graphics.
Nvidia doesn't offer a CPU, and is still incapable of a 3 piece set because they only offer seperate NB/SB chips. Cpu+NB+SB+GPU=4.