Nano Processor at Heart of Via-Nvidia Alliance

Via Technologies' Nano processor will be a key component of an affordable computing platform that is being jointly developed with Nvidia.

"One thing the Nano enables us to do with the increased performance is to address mainstream markets," said Richard Brown, vice president of marketing at Via Technologies. "This will enable us to move into bigger devices, such as 15-inch laptops and on the desktop...That's where the partnership and cooperation with Nvidia comes in."

Few details of the nascent Nvidia-Via partnership have been unveiled, although Nvidia is believed to be developing a chipset that will work with Via's processors. A detailed announcement is expected to be made by the companies at the upcoming Computex show in Taipei next week.

Nvidia's support will bring far better graphics capabilities to Nano-based systems than would otherwise be possible. S3 Graphics, which developed the graphics cores used with Via's current chipsets, is no match for Nvidia and its cutting-edge graphics processors.

The alliance will also help Nvidia stave off growing competition from Intel, which wants to take a bigger share of the graphics market, and Advanced Micro Devices, which acquired ATI Technologies so that it could combine graphics cores with a microprocessor on the same silicon chip.