VIA to return to CPU Market with Zhaoxin processors
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mbk1969
Anybody heard about Transmeta?
anticupidon
From what i remeber, VIA still holds the x86 license, so this could be a new player in the CPU arena.
Romulus_ut3
My first ever computer was based on a Cyrix 333 MHz CPU. I have very fond memories of it.
Welcome back to the game, VIA. I hope you're here to stay this time.
FM57
28nm ? Hmm
Even 16nm seems pretty low profile
kruno
Basically butchered,bought and it's IP sold to patent troll,nothing exist anymore
cryohellinc
Great news, any competition on this market is great. Best of luck!
mbk1969
It was a rhetorical question. IIRC back in old days neither VIA nor Cyrix were real competitors to Intel and AMD, and both companies` CPUs were low budget niche.
Kaarme
Quite a dream to catch up with AMD so fast considering how hard it was for AMD to get anywhere close to Intel. Is VIA actually a company as rich as Nvidia to have the money for that? Or perhaps they used some crafty corporate espionage to avoid R&D expenses..?
AsiJu
Good to have more competition, but I'm a bit skeptical about actual performance. Specwise those look to be budget(ish) CPUs based on frequency, unless VIA has worked some magic.
Like said VIA or Cyrix were never really true competition to Intel or AMD in the past so just wondering how they could turn the tables now out of a sudden, having been out so long.
Prove me wrong and I'm glad, though.
ladcrooks
i do remember that , mine was a 286 - how old are we? sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh! 😀
more competitors the better
Romulus_ut3
I am 29, and had my first computer around 1998, though wasn't really allowed to use it "personally" till the year 2000. I remember all that ruckus about Y2K borking up data and all. I believe the motherboard I had was a TX Pro something, it came with 32 MB of RAM, a 13.5 GB Quantum Fireball Hard Drive, later got a Genius 32X CD ROM drive, and the OS it ran best was Windows 95. The highest possible color for the desktop was 24 Bit.
I remember changing the colors to 16 and the display looked.. terrible and I thought I was done killing my computer. That was the first frightening experience with computers I had.
The first realization that I needed an upgrade came when Prince Of Perisa 3D came out, and it said in the minimum requirements that it needed a 333 MHz Pentium and my Cyrix, despite having the clock speed didn't provide anywhere near a satisfactory gameplay experience.
Quake II had huge loading times, to the point I got used to the Hard Drive humming "Kerrr kherrrr kherrr kherrrr"
Evildead666
I had a whole load of Via EPIA MII boards in the 2000's.
A 1GHz MII was about equal to a 500MHz PIII, which was fine for most Mini-ITX setups , as Firewalls, and FileServers.
I even had one running as a dedicated Trackmania Nations server 🙂
Great to see them back, can't wait for some Nano-ITX, or even Pico-ITX goodness 😉
AlmondMan
Certainly hope they can deliver competitive products. Even for the budget market that's a good thing.
Fender178
I remember VIA from their chipset days and their chipsets were hit and miss on how good they were. It all depended on the Operating system you had installed and what other hardware was in there as well. Let see what they can do with their CPUs.
Silva
I believe in the performance when I see it.
Sure, more competition is amazing, but if it was easy to just make a chip and compete with the likes of Intel/AMD, more companies would be doing it.
If the price is right, I'm sure it will have it's place.
GamerNerves
This is super cool. I really hope they have strong IPC with those clocks. I have already invested on AM4 platform, but I really could buy something from VIA if games will run well. Very curious to see their motherboards as well and what are the manufacturers.
schmidtbag
People are being waaaaaay too optimistic that VIA will compete against Intel or AMD. Even MIPS is probably more popular at this rate.
VIA's bread and butter is cheap embedded devices where the user/company requires Windows (or at least x86) software. AMD has traditionally been too power-hungry or has too large of a footpint. Intel has been too expensive. MIPS has no binary compatibility whatsoever, and VIA already makes ARM devices (just in case).
Remember, VIA uses their own graphics, and they are notorious for not maintaining them properly. They also don't tend to support any desktop PCIe slots, and a lot of their boards don't support GPIO. VIA pretty much only specializes in industrial platforms catered to the Asian market. If you're hoping to use this for a HTPC or robot or whatever, you may want to look elsewhere.
Regardless, I still wish the best for VIA. I've always liked them, but once Intel started being the sole provider of chipsets to motheboards, that's when VIA started to fade into obscurity. Realtek's network and audio also seemed to evolve too quickly.
H83
Even if VIA cpus are weak it´s always better to have them around than not. And they can be proud of something, they are going to offer more cores than Intel!...:D
Fender178
I thought that a lawsuit by Intel ended VIA's chipset making?
schmidtbag
I agree it's good to have them around, but if people think having them around is good for the sake of competition, that likely isn't going to be the case. Back when VIA released their last generation of x86 CPUs, nobody gave a crap, even though they had the cheapest and lowest wattage x86 quad cores.
Possibly - I haven't heard of that. But considering that SIS, Nvidia, and whoever else I'm forgetting also stopped making chipsets at around the same time, I don't think the lawsuit had everything to do with it.
