Via Demos P4 Chip Set, Low-Power CPU

Looking to outshine competitors Intel and AMD, Via has unveiled two new products, demonstrating a DDR chip set for the Pentium 4, and a CPU forged from a new 0.13-micron production process.

Most notable is the company's demonstration of the as-yet-unlicensed P4 chip set, called the P4X266. Via officials won't offer a specific launch date, but say the chip set will reach customers soon. Via's latest C3 processor, however, is shipping now at speeds up to 800 MHz. It's the first volume-production processor born of the 0.13-micron process.

Via is showing the products at the Computex computer show in Taipei, Taiwan. Earlier this week, Via competitors and occasional partners Intel and AMD both displayed new products there. Intel projects a September launch of its 845 chip set, which marries the P4 to SDRAM or DDR memory. Its previous Pentium 4 chip sets support only RDRAM. Intel also demonstrated a notebook with its first 0.13-micron chip, a 1.16-GHz Tualatin processor due in the third quarter of this year. AMD launched its multiprocessor chip set and Athlon MP chip.

Via: Let Intel Sue

Via demonstrated the P4X266 chip set although it still lacks a license from Intel to use the 400-MHz system bus that connects to the P4. It's not the first time the company has flouted Intel's patents--just last year the two companies settled the bulk of an Intel lawsuit over Via's use of the P6 bus that connects to the PIII processor.

Via officials say they are confident legal issues will not stop the company from bringing the P4X266 to market.

"The legal team has come to me and said we don't have any legal problems," says Wenchi Chen, Via's president and chief executive officer. "There is no guarantee Intel won't sue, they always do."

Intel spokesperson Chuck Mulloy declines to comment on the possibility of future litigation against Via. He points out, however, that while the companies settled the bulk of the former lawsuit, Intel still has pending litigation against the company from that filing.

Good for Intel, Too?

Analyst Mike Feibus of Mercury Research isn't so sure Intel will sue. For one thing, the company may not want to risk its patents by filing a lawsuit. For another, the P4 can use the support of a good DDR-based chip set--no matter who makes it, he says.

"This is a product that could do the P4 a world of good," he says.

Intel's 845 is on the way, but the Via product will be ready first--and could help the P4 penetrate new markets sooner, he says.

The P4 and Rambus combination hasn't really hurt consumer sales, but corporate buyers seem less willing to go with the memory standard, he says. That's because many felt burned by Intel's delayed launch of the 820, its first Rambus-based chip set for the Pentium III.

Corporate buyers want more mainstream memory choices, he says. Still, many corporate buyers are also wary of Via, which earned an early reputation for beta-testing its products in the field, he says.

The company's image is improving, though. "There is still a hesitation, but they look better than ever before," he says.

Feibus expects Via's new chip set to arrive as much as three months ahead of Intel's product. In hindsight, it seems Intel may have been too slow embracing the other memory types for the P4, he says.

"Intel recognized the P4 as another way to turn the world on to Rambus," he says. Unfortunately for the company, "it still hasn't turned out that way."

Shrinking the Chip

Via is ahead of the major chip manufacturers in another area: processor production. With its launch of an 800-MHz C3 processor it created using a 0.13-micron process, the company and its contract foundry TSMC are the first to use the new process.

Intel's first volume production of a 0.13-micron chip won't begin until the third quarter, and AMD isn't producing chips using the process until 2002. Both companies produce most of their current processors using a 0.18-micron process.

The 0.13-micron manufacturing process lets Via pack more processing power into a given space than is possible in larger 0.15-micron and 0.18-micron chips. The measurement indicates the width of the smallest gap between circuits on a chip. A narrower gap also enables faster processing.

Still Processing Below a Gig

Despite Via's move to the new process, analyst Feibus notes that its chips still lag those from Intel and AMD in terms of clock speed.

Even with the new process, the chip's architecture and design aren't enough to move the processor into the same speed range as the Athlon or Pentium 4, he says.

Via executives expect to offer the chip at speeds of up to 1 GHz soon, and say engineers designed the chip for low power consumption and cool operation. They expect vendors to use the chip in value PCs, notebooks, and Internet appliances.

However, Via isn't trying to best the other two in the mainstream processor market, Feibus says. The company is shooting for value-oriented buyers, and could find plenty of success there since that's a growing market, he says.

The chip's low operating temperature lets it cool without a fan, reducing bulk, cost, and noise, says C.J. Holthaus, a lead engineer at Via's Centaur technology division.

"No other processor company can passively cool a gigahertz CPU," Holthaus says.

(Sumner Lemon and Stephen Lawson of IDG News Service, contributed to this report.)