VIA Technologies
Type	Public (TSE: 2388)[1]
Founded	1987
Headquarters	Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
Industry	Computer
Products	Chipsets, motherboards, CPUs
Website	www.via.com.tw

VIA Technologies (TSE: 2388) is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory, and is part of the Formosa Plastics Group. A public company usually refers to a company that is permitted to offer its registered securities ( Stock, bonds, etc The Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation ( TSEC) is a Financial institution, located in Taipei 101, in Taipei, Taiwan. Taipei ( Taiwanese Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tâi-pak-chhī Jhuyin Fuhao: ㄊㄞˊ ㄅㄟˇ ㄕˋ Hakka: Thòi-pet-sṳ has been the capital of Taiwan ( Taiwanese: Tâi-oân/Tāi-oân (historically 大灣/台員/大員/台圓/大圓/台窩灣 is an Island in East Asia. For other uses of this term see Industry (disambiguation An industry (from Latin industrius, "diligent industrious" Computer industry is a collective term used to describe the whole range of businesses involved in developing Computer software, designing Computer hardware and In Marketing, a product is anything that can be offered to a Market that might satisfy a want or need A chipset is a group of Integrated circuits or chips that are designed to work together and are usually marketed as a single product A motherboard is the central or primary Printed circuit board (PCB making up a complex electronic system such as a modern Computer or Laptop A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages The Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation ( TSEC) is a Financial institution, located in Taipei 101, in Taipei, Taiwan. Taiwan ( Taiwanese: Tâi-oân/Tāi-oân (historically 大灣/台員/大員/台圓/大圓/台窩灣 is an Island in East Asia. Microchipsjpg|right|thumb|200px|Microchips ( EPROM memory with a transparent window showing the integrated circuit inside A motherboard is the central or primary Printed circuit board (PCB making up a complex electronic system such as a modern Computer or Laptop A chipset is a group of Integrated circuits or chips that are designed to work together and are usually marketed as a single product Formosa Plastics Group ( Ch: 台塑關係企業 is a Taiwanese conglomerate of diverse interests including Biotechnology, Petrochemical processing 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. A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of Hardware devices implemented on Semiconductor Silicon (ˈsɪlɪkən or /ˈsɪlɪkɒn/ silicium is the Chemical element that has the symbol Si and Atomic number 14 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited ( Traditional Chinese: 台灣積體電路製造股份有限公司 abbrev )

Contents 1 History 2 Products 3 Market trends 4 Legal issues 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

History

The company was founded in 1987 from the Symphony Company in Silicon Valley by Wen Chi Chen (陳文琦), among others. For the valley nicknamed "Silicone Valley" see San Fernando Valley. Wen Chi Chen (陳文琦 has been President and CEO of VIA Technologies, Inc He was employed at Intel before joining Symphony, and is still CEO of Symphony. Chen transferred the employees of Symphony to Taiwan to start chip production. VIA stands for "Very Innovative Architecture".

In 1992 headquarters was moved to Taipei, Taiwan.

In 1996 VIA played a major part in the PC Common Architecture standard group, pushing the switch from the ISA bus to the PCI bus. Industry Standard Architecture (in practice almost always shortened to ISA) was a Computer bus standard for IBM compatible computers The Peripheral Component Interconnect, or PCI Standard (commonly PCI) specifies a Computer bus for attaching peripheral devices to a Computer

In 1999 it acquired most of Cyrix (then a division of National Semiconductor) and also Integrated Device Technology's Centaur, marking its entry into the x86 microprocessor market. Cyrix was a CPU manufacturer that began in 1978 in Richardson Texas as a specialist supplier of high-performance math co-processors for 286 and National Semiconductor ( is a Semiconductor manufacturer specializing in analog devices and subsystems headquartered in Santa Clara, California, IDT ( was founded in 1980 as a Semiconductor vendor Employing approximately 2500 people worldwide headquartered in San Jose California and operating See also X86 assembly language The generic term x86 refers to the most commercially successful Instruction set architecture in the history of Personal A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a Central processing unit (CPU on a single Integrated VIA is the maker of the VIA C3 and VIA C7 processors and the EPIA platform. The VIA C3 is a family of X86 Central processing units for Personal computers designed by Centaur Technology and sold by VIA Technologies The VIA C7 is an X86 Central processing unit designed by Centaur Technology and sold by VIA Technologies. The Cyrix MediaGX platform remained with National Semiconductor. in 1997, the MediaGX CPU was an X86 processor manufactured and designed by Cyrix and later after merger manufactured by National Semiconductor

In 2001 VIA established the S3 Graphics joint venture. S3 Graphics Ltd is a company specializing in graphics chipsets

In February 2005, VIA celebrated the production of the 100 Millionth VIA AMD chipset.

Products

While VIA is not held in high regards compared to other chipset providers (such as ATI, AMD, Intel or NVIDIA), one or more of VIA's many chipsets feature in a wide variety of PC products. The multinational NVIDIA Corporation ( (ɪnˈvɪdiə specializes in the manufacture of graphics-processor technologies for Workstations 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. ASUSTeK Computer Incorporated (Asus () ( is a Taiwan -based multinational company that produces Motherboards Graphics cards Optical drives

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.

Market trends

While an established supplier of PC components, notably for the Super Socket 7 platform, VIA's present market position derives from the success of its Pentium III chipsets. The Super Socket 7, also referred to as Super 7, is an extension of the Socket 7 ZIF socket specification Pentium III variants Katmai The first Pentium III variant was the Katmai (Intel product code 80525 Intel made the mistake of discontinuing development of its SDRAM chipsets, and stated as policy only RAMBUS memory would be supported going forward. SDRAM refers to synchronous Dynamic random access memory, a term that is used to describe dynamic random access memory that has a synchronous interface Since RAMBUS was both more expensive at the time, and offered few if any obvious performance advantages, manufacturers found they could ship performance-equivalent PCs at a lower cost by using VIA chipsets. Rambus Incorporated ( founded in 1990, is a provider of high-speed interface technology most notably their Rambus Dynamic RAM memory technology, which

While historically VIA chipsets had suffered compatibility and performance issues, especially regarding AGP implementations, an internal program to raise standards had also begun to show results. VIA's fast performing, stable, mature chipsets, suddenly found huge market appeal, and profits soared. Many companies that had previously maintained Intel-only buying policies, for the first time placed volume orders with VIA, and were satisfied with the results. Intel eventually restarted their 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. The multinational NVIDIA Corporation ( (ɪnˈvɪdiə specializes in the manufacture of graphics-processor technologies for Workstations Development The nForce2 features two different southbridges the MCP and the MCP-T At the same time, VIA benefited from AMD's popular Athlon processor, for which VIA sold millions of chipsets. Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of different X86 processors designed and manufactured by AMD.

In response to increasing market competition, VIA decided to buy out the ailing S3 Graphics business. S3 Graphics Ltd is a company specializing in graphics chipsets While the Savage chipset was not fast enough to survive as a discrete solution, with its low manufacturing cost it made an ideal integrated solution, as part of the VIA north bridge. The northbridge, also known as the memory controller hub ( MCH) in Intel systems (AMD VIA SiS and others usually use 'northbridge' is traditionally one Under VIA, the S3 brand has generally held onto a 10% share of the PC graphics market, behind Intel, ATI, and NVIDIA. The multinational NVIDIA Corporation ( (ɪnˈvɪdiə specializes in the manufacture of graphics-processor technologies for Workstations VIA also includes the VIA Envy soundcard on its motherboards, which offers 24-bit sound. The VIA Envy24 audio chipset series delivers true 24-bit sound for personal computers

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. The Pentium 4 brand refers to Intel 's line of single- core mainstream desktop and Laptop Central processing units (CPUs introduced This is a list of Computer Motherboard Chipsets made by VIA Technologies. The Athlon 64 is an eighth-generation AMD64 architecture Microprocessor produced by AMD, released on

VIA has also continued development of its VIA C3 and VIA C7 processor, targeting small, light, low power applications, a market space in which VIA is still successful. The VIA C3 is a family of X86 Central processing units for Personal computers designed by Centaur Technology and sold by VIA Technologies The VIA C7 is an X86 Central processing unit designed by Centaur Technology and sold by VIA Technologies. In January 2008, Via unveiled VIA Isaiah, an 11mm x 11mm footprint, VM-enabled x86-64 processor expected to debut in Q1, 2008 for ultra-mobile PCs. The VIA Nano (formerly codenamed VIA Isaiah) is a 64-bit Central processing unit for Personal computers released by VIA Technologies x86-64 is a Superset of the x86 instruction set architecture. In Personal computers Ultra-Mobile PC (often abbreviated UMPC) is a small Form factor (a standard size and shape for Tablet PCs and subnotebook/

Legal issues

On the basis of the IDT Centaur acquisition,^[1] 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. A grace period is a period of time past the deadline for fulfilling an obligation during which a penalty that would be imposed for being late is waived

See also

• Mini-ITX
• Pico-ITX
• Nano-ITX
• NanoBook
• VIA chipsets
• VIA C3
• VIA C7
• VIA Nano
• VIA Envy
• VIA CoreFusion
• EPIA
• List of VIA microprocessors

References

External links

• VIA Technologies (Taiwan)
• VIA Arena Homepage
• The 100 Millionth VIA AMD Chipset
• Linux on laptops and notebooks with VIA CPU
• Chrome-Center
• viagallery.com's photostream

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