VIA Readying New 64-bit x86 Processor to Take on Intel Bay Trail and AMD Kabini

What a fascinating new chip. The unfortunate part is that VIA isn't really a brand name that can compete with Intel. Even AMD is having trouble entering other markets too. Intel saturates nearly everything. That and ARM.

What a fascinating and balanced set of benchmarks though. No claims of complete superiority, just a table with data. Interesting.
 
All comes down to price. Both the Intel Baytrail and AMD Kabini quad cores can be had under $100 for a full system (minus RAM).
 
hopefully price is good, maybe a windows 8 tablet is in my future?
 
I recall their last CPU was impressive when they showed it to [H]. Sadly, once they actually shipped it 18 months later it wasn't competitive in the slightest. I wouldn't count on finding one of these around any time soon.
 
^ that's the key for success. VIA needs to get these to market fast. Or they will realize a repeat of last time.
 
TechPowerUp incorrectly labels the Z3770 as a 2.4GHz processor. It can achieve that speed for short bursts when one core is running, but it's actually 1.47GHz processor. Both sources linked at the bottom of the page acknowledge that. The Z3770 doesn't support AVX, which is the basis of most of the difference between the scores.

VIA hasn't announced how much power Isiah II uses, so it's probably closer to the 25W AMD chip than the 2W Atom chip. Meh, it may go in some bottom of the barrel devices in developing countries, but it doesn't look exciting in any way.
 
pxc said:
VIA hasn't announced how much power Isiah II uses, so it's probably closer to the 25W AMD chip than the 2W Atom chip. Meh, it may go in some bottom of the barrel devices in developing countries, but it doesn't look exciting in any way.
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Really depends on its pricing, its power profile and what the graphics situation looks like. If all are reasonable, there are probably few particular reasons why this can't make it into, say, Chromeboxes, low-cost all-in-ones and so forth.

We're at the point now where a lot of devices don't need a lot of power, and anything as good or better than that Atom is decently okay when coupled with reasonably fast solid state storage and ample RAM. There are a lot of opportunities for OEMs to do interesting things with this range of hardware, and sell them in major markets — we've just not really seen it yet.
 
wonderfield said:
Really depends on its pricing, its power profile and what the graphics situation looks like. If all are reasonable, there are probably few particular reasons why this can't make it into, say, Chromeboxes, low-cost all-in-ones and so forth.

We're at the point now where a lot of devices don't need a lot of power, and anything as good or better than that Atom is decently okay when coupled with reasonably fast solid state storage and ample RAM. There are a lot of opportunities for OEMs to do interesting things with this range of hardware, and sell them in major markets — we've just not really seen it yet.
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Yeah, if it's got better performance at a similar power level it'd be a serious contender in the AM1 market for HTPCs and the like.
 
wonderfield said:
Really depends on its pricing, its power profile and what the graphics situation looks like.
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That's just about everything. :p

The pricing will be cheap because that's all VIA can get for its processors. The IPC in the comparison table puts CPU performance on par with a very gimped 2-issue Silvermont core (the Atom is purposely gimped in order to be very power efficient, Isaiah II is gimped because it sucks). VIA stopped releasing power consumption* in the Nano days since it was so uncompetitive by any metric. Lacking power consumption figures shouldn't be a surprise I guess. lol @ graphics. VIA would be better off licensing a GPU from 4th tier vendors than to continue the torture its done to users with Chrome HC graphics.

* VIA only released minimum power figures since the Nano L2xxx series was launched
 
Cerulean said:
AMD vs Intel vs Russia vs VIA
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x86-64{AMD, Intel, Via} vs ARM{apple, Russia (still in development), qualcomm, AMD, nvidia, samsung, etc} vs MIPS{China, Broadcom, Atheros (now Qualcomm Atheros), etc} vs Power and PowerPC{IBM, microsoft, freeScale, etc}

There you go buddy. :)
 
You can't get a "full system", but Bay Trail CPU/mobo combos are $60-100. The absolute cheapest full Bay Trail system (board, CPU, storage, WiFi module and RAM) is $180.
 
Atom is more than 2W cause 2W is SDP for Scenario Design Power, TDP is much higher than that

problem with all those VIA CPUs is not so much performance but availability. I can easily buy product with Atom or even AMD solution (especially lately after AM1 launch), be it motherboard or tablet but if I wanted to make small home theater system on Via Nano X2 or X4 specifically, even just for fun of having non-Intel and non-AMD CPU then I am out of luck. Even less luck I have to find version like the one that was shown in benchmark comparison cause slower versions are sometimes available on those super tiniest motherboards but faster versions and normal micto-ITX not so much.

So I wonder: on what exactly VIA is making money here if their market penetration is so miserable? They were making some ARM CPUs for cheapest netbooks but they were beat out of this niche by the likes of Mediatek. Why? Couldn't VIA buy license from ARM and let TSMC to produce some crappy Cortex A7's chips and then sold them cheap? Just WTF is wrong with this company? Are they having some secret military contract for those X86 chips that they are still making them? :confused:
 
They're not making money.

http://www.hoovers.com/company-info...al.VIA_Technologies_Inc.2c9d8496b8bd4e09.html

VIA is kept alive by clever use of press releases, and continuing like they're not bleeding money. They are a roughly 250 million USD/year revenue company, making them tiny compared to their competition. They target low-cost, later-to-market solutions because they can't afford to compete.

God knows why, but foolish investors gave them another 140m usd back in 2011.

They bought the microprocessor business when things were just beginning to crater (in their prime they were closer to a billion-a-year company). They realized they they would be wasting tons of investment in chipset know-how if they were closed-off from Intel's new P4 bus, so they decided to try to keep the company afloat through a new business plan, rather than sell off the entire chipset division.

As part of that new business plan, they targeted any POS that would use their processors, just so they could remain relevant to consumers (and get lots of free press from review sites). Also, they targeted a largely-untapped market for x86-based industrial control/embedded passive motherboards, which means selling in retail for several years with the specs unchanged, and making spares available for longer. This was something Intel was unwilling to do; VIA could do it because they supplied both the chipsets and processors.

Unfortunately for VIA, Intel has finally decided to offer cheap processors that are better, and also extended-life SKUs, which has evaporated their last real moneymaker. This is the reason you can't find their processors anywhere these days. So VIA is just carrying-on business as usual, trying to stay alive.

Even if they can't afford a new competitive processor design, any press is good press, right?
 
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XoR said:
Atom is more than 2W cause 2W is SDP for Scenario Design Power, TDP is much higher than that

problem with all those VIA CPUs is not so much performance but availability. I can easily buy product with Atom or even AMD solution (especially lately after AM1 launch), be it motherboard or tablet but if I wanted to make small home theater system on Via Nano X2 or X4 specifically, even just for fun of having non-Intel and non-AMD CPU then I am out of luck. Even less luck I have to find version like the one that was shown in benchmark comparison cause slower versions are sometimes available on those super tiniest motherboards but faster versions and normal micto-ITX not so much.

So I wonder: on what exactly VIA is making money here if their market penetration is so miserable? They were making some ARM CPUs for cheapest netbooks but they were beat out of this niche by the likes of Mediatek. Why? Couldn't VIA buy license from ARM and let TSMC to produce some crappy Cortex A7's chips and then sold them cheap? Just WTF is wrong with this company? Are they having some secret military contract for those X86 chips that they are still making them? :confused:
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They are a player in developing markets. They have a presence in Latin America, india, china and eastern europe. They also do well in the embedded market.
 
New website is still "coming" two days after the counter stopped.

Well, wouldn't be via without late product releases :)
 
Maybe Centaur invented time travel. The counter now says 21 days.
 
I wish them all the best, but that requires them releasing products. Which...I don't know if that's happening.

Sure would be nice if VIA was competitive even in the low-end consumer market, though.
 
Yeah, it would be nice if there were more competition on the x86 front, but that probably won't happen any time soon.
 
Red Falcon said:
Only 4 more days... until the counter resets again. :D
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Well, I guess I was wrong.
The counter didn't reset, it just got to zero and stayed there, with a link that goes no where.

Better luck next time. :p
 
The page is up, but there aren't any links to Isaiah II processors that I can find.
 
wonderfield said:
The page is up, but there aren't any links to Isaiah II processors that I can find.
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27.5 watt TDP? Ouch.
This would have been really neat about 4 years ago, not so much now.

It's also only clocked at 1.2GHz, and I'd bet that most ARM quad-core CPUs could match it in many areas, not to mention at a fraction of the TDP.
 
Red Falcon said:
27.5 watt TDP? Ouch.
This would have been really neat about 4 years ago, not so much now.

It's also only clocked at 1.2GHz, and I'd bet that most ARM quad-core CPUs could match it in many areas, not to mention at a fraction of the TDP.
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It would have been neat, if VIA actually put any effort into their products :D

It was a pathetic effort to distract the market from the release of the Sandy Bridge Celeron 847, which was faster in performance than any Via Nano X2 while consuming the same power, and selling for peanuts. VIA released the Quadcore to play the "moar coars" game.

Remember the wide range of Chromebook netbook replacements that came along at bargain-basement prices? Most of them were running the 847, especially the ones from Acer. That same chip made it's way into lots of cheap low-power motherboards with the 847 soldered-on, targeted at the embedded market.

Funny enough, I don't think that Intel released the Celeron 847 to combat anything from VIA - more likely it was intended to combat AMD's Bobcat, since Bay Trail was still a couple years out. VIA simply got caught in the crossfire of two massive cannons going off.
 
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