Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Businesses Hardware

VIA Quits Motherboard Chipset Business 192

arcticstoat writes "Following the media hit that was VIA's Nano processor, VIA says that it's now quitting the motherboard chipset business that used to be its bread and butter product for years. VIA's vice president of corporate marketing in Taiwan, Richard Brown, explained that: 'Intel provides the vast majority of chipsets for its processors and, following its purchase of ATI, AMD is also moving very quickly in the same direction.' VIA will still be developing chipsets for integrated motherboards featuring the Nano CPU, but will no longer produce chipsets for Intel and AMD CPUs. Was this the right decision, and where does this leave other third-party chipset manufacturers such as SiS?" Seems like this is a tough business to stick around in.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

VIA Quits Motherboard Chipset Business

Comments Filter:
  • too bad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by larry bagina ( 561269 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @09:03AM (#24554473) Journal
    competition is a good thing.
    • Re:too bad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bloodninja ( 1291306 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @09:10AM (#24554533)

      competition is a good thing.

      Especially in the bottom layer of a vertical market that is so critical to our everyday lives. I fear a world with one dominant processor manufacturer. Much as I fear a world with one dominant software manufacturer.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        In this case, you have 3 companies making binary compatible "platforms". This is direct competition with the added benefit of less hardware quirks and incompatibilities from trying to support everyone else. This is the very reason why Apple is hesitant to vary their hardware.

        If you fear one will dominate than the others, Intel won that fight with it's partner Microsoft in the 90s.

        I think my only question in this is where nVidia will fit in? All three companies (AMD/Intel/VIA) make their own integrated every

        • Re:too bad (Score:5, Interesting)

          by ATMD ( 986401 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:21AM (#24555315) Journal

          Average Joe doesn't buy a video card upgrade anyway, so nvidia's market there shouldn't be too badly affected. Of course, if AMD/ATi decide to introduce incompatibilities into their chipset that make it hard for other video cards to work, that's another matter. Also don't nvidia do integrated graphics? They might have a problem there.

          Perhaps we'll see nvidia entering the CPU business some time soon... Maybe they'll be the new AMD, who knows?

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by ByOhTek ( 1181381 )

            Yeah, nVidia makes integrated video chips chips.

            Actualy, nVidia, VIA and SiS each shared one advantage over AMD and Intel - namely they made chipsets for both major platforms. AMD and Intel only make chipsets for their own.

            Of course, of the three, I've only like nVidia (their onboard video had passable 3D unlike SiS and VIA, and I found they had better stability too).

            An nVidia CPU...
            That thought made me very happy. It'd be nice to have a 3rd CPU in the performance market, to compete with AMD and Intel.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by ByOhTek ( 1181381 )

              Ach. Ich bin ein schesskopf.

              I forgot, there are AMD made chips for Intel CPUs, but I don't know if there are plans for new chips, or if they are ATi legacy.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by rickb928 ( 945187 )

            "Perhaps we'll see nvidia entering the CPU business some time soon... "

            Nvidia *IS* in the CPU business. We call their products GPUs, and we try to limit their use to display adapters, but GPUs are really slightly specialized CPUs. Go on, split the hairs, but it's way more true than false. There is even clustering [umd.edu] and app [slashdot.org] s/w for GPUs.

            Not at all a shocker if Nvidia starts marketing a specialized 'C'PU. Something either low power, graphics-enhanced or graphics-embedded, or maybe a one-chip solution. Not

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by billcopc ( 196330 )

              NVidia stumbles in the chipset arena because they just have too god-damn many of them. The process goes like this:

              Q. How many video cards do you want to SLI ?
              A. 0 -> get a 610/630 board
              1 -> get a 650 or 750
              2 -> get a 650 Ultra or 680
              3 -> get a 780 or 790

              Beyond the SLI madness, they all support the same processors - at least on the Intel side, I'm not up to date on AMD. I realize the "need" for segmentation, but that inevitably l

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )

            Perhaps we'll see nvidia entering the CPU business some time soon

            I guess you missed the memo. nVidia are an ARM Cortex A8 licensee. Their platform contains a multicore ARM CPU, an nVidia GPU and a few other things on a single chip. This is the kind of product you see in the fastest-growing part of the computing market.

        • by b4upoo ( 166390 )

          Perhaps VIA has a rabbit to pull out of the hat. If they have caught on to a new idea they might try to grab the entire market with a superior product that is not compatible with hardware from other companies.
          But if this is not the case then we might see recognition of low cost commodity PCs as the only worthwhile market. Long gone are the days when top end PCs were the big game and gamers were the target market. Oddly TV sets are getting more expensive due to new de

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Abreu ( 173023 )

            I for one, welcome our new racing-to-the-bottom overlords.

            Maybe that way, the gaming software people will focus on gameplay innovations, instead of making ever larger and slower eyecandy

        • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          Of those 3 companies, only AMD currently make a complete package that's likely to satisfy gamers...
          VIA only produce low power CPUs that don't compete on the gaming front, and Intel only produce low end videocards that would be no use for serious gaming.
          I would imagine nVidia's target would be producing videocards for use with Intel motherboards, and by OEMs such as Apple.
          Their linux drivers are also better than ATI's for the time being, tho that is rapidly changing.

        • ATI has better on board video then intel so NVidia can start makeing more intel chipsets with sli and good on board video as well the amd chip set for the people who want sli on amd system.

          AMD / ATI 790gx is cool 64-128+ side port ram + sb750 + Hybrid Graphics with CrossFireX.

          VIA quitting will push intel on board video down to dead last.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        Definitely. I also fear a world with two dominant processor manufacturers who make the whole motherboard. Maybe that's too much fear...
        If cpu makers make the who shebang then expect development to slow to the same rate as development in the auto industry.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by phulegart ( 997083 )

          You don't mean "also" do you?

          Because that would mean you would fear a world with ONE dominant processor manufacturer who make the whole motherboard. That's what the parent said.

          We currently HAVE two, and VIA intends to make it three.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            How about "in addition"?

            My point is that the deeper the integration goes the less chance there is for real competition. If each CPU maker does their own chipsets, audio and video then eventually there'll be no room for substantive distinction between motherboards and those manufacturers will either disappear or just produce a bunch of exact implementations of a reference design from the CPU makers.

            After that the rate of innovation will flatten out and we'll settle into a yearly cycle of rehashing the s
            • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

              Perhaps, or perhaps the cpu/motherboard will just be thought of as a single component instead of discrete ones... You choose one, and then choose the other parts to go round it (ram etc)

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by Godji ( 957148 )
        One dominant software manufacturer? No big deal, the free software community will develop better software. One dominant hardware manufacturer? Now that's scary.
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by blitzkrieg3 ( 995849 )

        I fear a world with one dominant processor manufacturer

        Welcome to 2006.

      • by Locutus ( 9039 )

        especially when we have seen dominant characters in this industry use technical techniques to block competition. A PC market without competition at the chipset level is dangerous for anyone who appreciates putting any OS on any hardware. IMO.

        LoB

    • Agreed, although I can see why VIA is doing what they're doing.

      Competition may be good for the market as a whole, but it is often bad for the losers, and it looks like they've determined that their fate along their previous course would ultimately lead to being driven out of the market, so they're cutting out while they still can.

      VIA have been an also-ran in the x86 chipset business since around the time nVidia started making nForce boards for AMD. I haven't really considered them since the days of KT266.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Scoth ( 879800 )
        Uhg. Personally, I've never had anything but trouble from Via chipsets. I'm pretty sure I even had KT133A and KT266 chipset boards at one point. Endless Safe Mode reinstalls of the IRQ routing drivers, occasional Windows flakiness from said drivers, the USB filter drivers, weird voltage/clock frequency stuff... once I spent the little extra for an Intel chipset for my P3, I never went back to Via. A friend had given me a KT-7A RAID and after a little fighting, I gave it back and bought a nForce chipset boar
        • Re:too bad (Score:5, Informative)

          by thealsir ( 927362 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:38AM (#24555567) Homepage

          Complete opposite experience here. I admit I haven't used the old slot A KX1xx athlon chipsets KT133/A or the original KT266, but I've run several motherboards on the Apollo Pro 133, KT266A, KT333 and KT400, and haven't had any problems. I even ran several of them overclocked, on XP, 2000, and Linux. In fact, the machine I'm typing this on is a KT400 with 1GB RAM and a 2GHz Athlon XP running vista, with no stability issues whatsoever, it's a bit slow but I put a lot of load on it and there are server apps running in the background too.

          The KT266A board that I had (Epox 8KHA+) was one of the fastest boards I ever owned, for its time. And it never had any problems, even overclocked.

          I can understand that people have had issues with several VIA chipset revisions. But they were in many instances a lot better than the alternatives. They were much better than intel during the i820 fiasco and have always been somewhat better than AMD's native chipsets (until the K8 chipsets that is).

          In fact, until nVidia came along with the nforce, they really were the only option for athlons. I'll admit that the nForce/2 offered some stiff competition and was good, and that nVidia eventually did usurp via with the nForce3 Ultra and beyond.

          You speak as someone who has limited anecdotal experience with a few via chipsets. Well, here I'm offering mine, with a few facts to back it up, as well as the experiences and opinions of many I've met over the years.

          VIA definitely played an important role in the game. For one, they were partially responsible for the Athlon's ascendancy. And second, they provided competition for Intel's chipsets when those were lacking. It is sad to see them exit the business.

          • The KT266A board that I had (Epox 8KHA+) was one of the fastest boards I ever owned, for its time. And it never had any problems, even overclocked.

            To be fair, the KT266A was a massive improvement over the KT266, both in terms of performance and stability. To the point where AMD went from using one of their own chipsets for their performance rating benchmarketing to using a VIA-based board.

            I think the sentiment about Via expressed in the GP was, for a time, largely deserved. However it was right around the

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Speaking as someone who has PC's dating back to the very beginning of the 90s (Possibly even '89 for the 386) I think *HALF* of all my motherboards are VIA based. And y'know what? I've NEVER had any of the major problems that were reported on them, other than the AGP FastWrite bug (And quite frankly, I've had *THAT* problem on every mobo that was supposed to support it, be it Intel VIA OR SiS). Furthermore my one current nice gaming board, which I got secondhand from my cousin is an ABIT VT7 with a Via Dual

        • The rig I built using a KT133A was the most stable machine I've ever owned ... that thing never missed a beat in the 4-5 years I used it as my primary machine.
    • Re:too bad (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @09:33AM (#24554753) Journal
      There is still competition, but the market has moved. People aren't buying a motherboard and a processor anymore, they're buying a platform. It used to be that motherboard manufacturers would get north and south bridge chips from different suppliers and combine them, then add a CPU and have a full package. Gradually the north and south bridges got combined (and AMD moved some parts of the north bridge chip into the CPU). In the embedded market, it's common to have all of these components in a single chip (and often a GPU and DSP or two too), and this is the direction the laptop market seems to be heading in too.

      They are getting out of this market, because it's not going to exist for much longer.

      • I still buy a motherboard and a processor... Your conclusion might be right but I'm not convinced of how you got there.
        • by Firehed ( 942385 )

          I'm guessing that your last name isn't Dell or Packard.

          • hehe - true, but the comment was

            People aren't buying a motherboard and a processor anymore, they're buying a platform.

            and as far as I can tell Newegg is still selling plenty of mobos and cpus separately.

            • by Abreu ( 173023 )

              Newegg caters to a small minority (namely people like us who can distinguish between a motherboard and a graphics card)

              Most computer buyers buy Dells, HPs, Gateways or Macs...
              Some of those might know there's Intel and AMD processors, but they aren't quite sure of the difference. ...And some of those pride themselves into knowing that Macs run with "a different Windows".

      • Having been in this business, I agree with you completely. It only makes sense to integrate this functionality. The complexity of the market makes it impossible to continue constructing things at the transistor level to take the analogy of the early Japanese radios. I won't comment on the monopolistic or monolithic problems with that, but the complexity in use is certainly better for advancing the art and I look forward to having the standard core and some innovation which can inter-operate with it.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      To survive it's sometimes best to be good at what you are doing. But being too specialized isn't good either because then you will become extinct as a dinosaur because you suddenly find yourself left behind in a swamp of old technology.

      VIA are good at producing low-power devices with reasonable performance for general use. There is competition from Intel now, but since the environmental concerns are growing over time VIA has a place in the server room for some applications that doesn't require a lot of comp

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Godji ( 957148 )
        Providing (almost) NVidia-like video card performance combined with (almost) Intel-like openness is one great thing AMD is doing right now. It's too bad that not enough pepole care about the openness to make it matter.
    • Hard to make a buck (Score:3, Interesting)

      by OrangeTide ( 124937 )

      The chipset business has gotten to the point that it is hard to turn a profit in that business. Especially when you need an R&D budget to stay competitive. I'm guessing VIA just does not have the margins to compete in the chipset business anymore, they probably were deciding if they should spin their next generation chipset and came to the conclusion to give up.

      VIA claims that they believe the third-party chipset market will disappear, and they may be right. But I think their decision was based entirely

    • Via's whole weakness has been this bi-polar nature where their bread-and-butter was the chipsets that made them have to kiss ass to Intel to make sure they were privy to the proprietary data they needed to keep their chipsets compatible. That left their own CPUs and boards as the ugly step-daughter.

      I remember when the Epias first came out here in Taiwan. You had to order them from England. There was no retail channel effort at all. I got really frustrated at this and went all over the island trying to get a

  • Goodbye VIA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jellybob ( 597204 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @09:06AM (#24554511) Journal

    I can't understand making that move at all.

    Sure there may be competition in the market, but at least it's a market they're already a big player in.

    Attempting to jump into the CPU business (almost) exclusively is likely to kill them, since AMD and Intel have the market fairly well tied up.

    • Re:Goodbye VIA (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bloodninja ( 1291306 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @09:14AM (#24554559)

      I can't understand making that move at all.

      Sure there may be competition in the market, but at least it's a market they're already a big player in.

      Attempting to jump into the CPU business (almost) exclusively is likely to kill them, since AMD and Intel have the market fairly well tied up.

      That's just the thing: they seems to have the resources for competing in only one of the markets. They choose the market that will offer them the most freedom of innovation. Additionally, it is a much more visible market, arguably a more critical market, and a market that is expanding faster than Intel and AMD can keep up (at least for small, handheld devices). Better to have the #3 slice of a huge pie than the #1 slice of a smaller pie.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by y86 ( 111726 )

      I can't understand making that move at all.

      It's a LOT easier to make parts for your own stuff. I'm sure it's quite a fracken battle to get the specs out of intel and AMD on their new CPU's while their also completing against via on the chipsets that the cpus will run on.

      If you were trying to make a competing part for a car I was making, which I was also selling parts for.... I would definitely put up every barrier possible.

      With an 18 month turn around on CPU speed, I bet it's VERY hard for via to keep up with intel and amd on the chipset front.

    • > I can't understand making that move at all.

      It makes a lot of sense. They were always chasing tail lights when developing chipsets to support Intel + AMD CPUs, whereas now they'll be in exclusive control of their device interface specifications and no longer be competing against chipsets from those other manufacturers.

      It's good on all fronts for VIA.

      It's less good for customers of Intel and AMD since some competition disappears, but I don't think that that will really matter. Both Intel and AMD make t

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      The third party chipset market is going away, because the chipset market is going away. The whole industry is moving towards a system-on-chip model. The embedded market's already moved, laptops will be next and (if they're still around, and not replaced by smart TV descendants) the desktop will follow.

      The low power CPU market, where Via is quite strong, is currently expanding a lot, in contrast. It makes sense to leave a shrinking market for a growing one. Their main competitors are likely to be peop

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by thogard ( 43403 )

      Why is there even a chip set business? The stuff on the chipset isn't much compared to whats on the CPU and in 5 years I don't expect there to be much of any market for chipsets at all. Your motherboard will consist of a CPU and line drivers for things like the audio circuit and loads of static control resistors.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
        A motherboard in the '90s had three important chips (in the '80s each one of these was a family of chips). The CPU did processing. The north bridge communicated with the CPU, the south bridge, memory, and any 'local bus' interfaces (VLB or PCI, later AGP). The south bridge had a load of controllers for things like the ISA bus, serial, PS/2, keyboard, and parallel ports, floppy and IDE controllers, and so on.

        For a while, north and south bridges from a manufacturer like Via communicated with the same inte

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Fazeshift ( 1192371 )
      I agree - abandoning their bread and butter product is not wise. At the same time, good riddance - I never had good luck with non-Intel (or non-AMD) chipsets being stable.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Attempting to jump into the CPU business (almost) exclusively is likely to kill them, since AMD and Intel have the market fairly well tied up.

      It's a good thing the folks at AMD didn't think like you when considering taking a leap at Intel's customers years ago.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      It's not just competition, and Via hasn't been a big player in years.

      Via hasn't had good penetration in the Intel market since the Apollo Pro 133 days. The P4 era all but locked them out.

      Via did pretty well (and at times, utterly dominated) in the AMD market until nForce4 came along--while it was common knowledge that nForce4 was horribly buggy, nVidia had better name recognition, was first to market with PCI-E, and had SLI. But Via managed to stay afloat despite this; they had a distinct budget niche. This

      • Re:Goodbye VIA (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Alereon ( 660683 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:53AM (#24555777)

        The end came when AMD's acquisition of ATI put Via in the same position they were in with Intel. To be fair, nVidia got stabbed in the back the same way. Both Via and nVidia had their turn as the de facto standard AMD chipset manufacturer, and the switch between them happened natrually; AMD buying ATI took it away from both of them by force. AMD's betrayal of their third-party chipset makers was galling. Not only is Via quitting, but there are rumors of nVidia doing the same thing.

        AMD didn't betray anyone. Via hasn't released a chipset with any innovative features in years, the only reason they had any products were to cover the legacy (AGP) and low-end markets. Their changing market focus has been obvious. nVidia has released a number of products with very high-profile defects, such as chipsets with severe data corruption bugs, and GPUs that fail prematurely due to packaging issues. nVidia chose to gamble that keeping SLI proprietary wouldn't piss Intel off enough to deny them a Nehalem bus license, and they lost. nVidia makes chipsets for extreme gamers who want SLI, and those consumers will buy Nehalem platforms because they are the fastest. If all nVidia has left is the AMD market, they really have no reason to keep making chipsets. The fact that their chipsets have a reputation for running hot and having issues doesn't really help at all.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Sure it makes sense. Via's constantly having to chase Intel and AMD in order to license the interconnect bus changes. On several occasions Via's had to reverse engineer the bus without a license; and, as a result, run into trouble. It's in Intel's best interest not to keep advance specification updates flowing to the 3rd party chipset manufacturer's because it gives them a head start with their own chipset. Same applies to AMD. Intel and AMD have seen the light and are now producing chipsets targetting

    • Think about it this way.

      Intel can currently supply all their own chipset needs inhouse. They currently do. Everything.

      AMD, with their partnering with Nvidia can supply all their own chipset needs. I would not be surprised to see AMD cut out Nvidia, and do it all themselves.

      Who is VIA going to sell chipsets to?

    • by Ilgaz ( 86384 )

      Doesn't AMD's move to get into mainboard chipset business and being abandoned by VIA, an independent manufacturer sound like 3dfx to you too?

      It sounds like it to me especially considering there are some special "troubleshooting" sections on websites about Nvidia chipset related problems along with their software. 3dfx was a great company and loved by partners until they decided to manufacture their own cards.

      Hope their decisions after Nvidia acquisition won't kill AMD since it will totally crash the alread

  • Right Decision (Score:2, Interesting)

    by doodzed ( 35795 )

    They should have quit years ago. They mainly had the bottom of the business and their chipsets just never quite worked right. From the first super-seven chipset of the pentium era that was almost as stable as intel to the athlon chipset I have that doesn't support PCI busmastering. Between the board makers and VIA you knew there was always going to be something wrong.

    Now that there are cheap boards from other manufacturers that are stable and have good drivers they have no reason to be in that market.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gmack ( 197796 )

      The only chip set I hated more than VIA was SIS.

      SIS could out glitch VIA every time.

  • by bestinshow ( 985111 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @09:06AM (#24554517)

    This is a sensible choice for VIA, for the reasons they have given. It's been on the table for quite some time I imagine.

    However a big thanks have to go out for them for their initial support of the AMD Athlon platform back in the day. Even if they had chipset problems since then...

    Now, however, they are quite a bit behind in terms of chipsets for desktop systems.

    I'd like to see a Nano with built-in chipset (memory controller, GPU at least) or even a SoC (Nano, Memory Controller, GPU, USB, Ethernet, SATA, Audio, ...) in the future, and now they can allocate resources to achieve this.

    • It wouldn't be new for them. Their last generation they had the CoreFusion, which is essentially a Via C3 on the same die as the CN400 (which includes their Unichrome Pro IGP).

      This current generation I wonder if they won't stick with a cpu coupled with a low power integrated north/southbridge rather than the cpu/northbridge + discrete southbridge combo, though. A Nano @ 1GHz with a VX800U chipset likely beats the old CoreFusion architecture in terms of system power consumption (7.5 watts for the Nano/VX80

      • Agreed. At least VIA is doing something interesting in this area, although it is seeming to take ages from my point of view. Nano + VX800U would be a great netbook combination (clearly not the 1.8GHz Nano which is rather warm, but the power consumption drops off drastically at 1.6GHz and 1.3GHz).

        Atom doesn't interest me because Intel are artificially limiting its capabilities in what system makers can include, and the chipset is a hulking beast on top.

  • I have had mixed experience with third party setups, that has incrementally gotten better over the years. The Intel offerings never really had great appeal to me outside the server area. So, is vendor lock-in (and lack of competition) going to be any good for the PC builders out there? I myself would rather see healthy competition...

    • by gmack ( 197796 )

      Losing the slower / lower quality players can only be a good thing. Now if only SIS would do the same.

      • By this logic, if AMD had quit processor business long time ago, we would never had 64 bit CPUs for under $100. Probably we wouldn't have CPUs under $100 at all.

        P.S. I never really had problems with VIA chipsets. I have more problems now with my aging nForce4 mobo than I ever had with all Ali+Intel+VIA based mobos combined in past decade. Surprisingly, Ali was most stable to me - but was sold off due to compatibility with newer video cards. Intel's low-end was really low-end and was very very slow and f

        • This has been the case for me also. I've used several chipsets over the last few years. My last 3 main systems have been nvidia and I have 2 systems for other uses. One is a VIA and the other is a nforce3 chipset. The last 3 nvidia systems that have used for my main platform have had issues. Nothing that was big but where buggy as hell.

          I'm currently using a AMD 790xx and I'm having no issues what so ever with. The VIA system I've had for 3 years and is running flawlessly. I've been using it for my

  • by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @09:12AM (#24554551)

    Seems like this is a tough business to stick around in.

    Considering Nvidia reject the reports of its exit from the chipset market out of hand and demanded a retraction from the original source (Digitimes), I don't think that story is worth linking to...

    • It's worth noting that nVidia are also moving into the system-on-chip market with their Cortex A8 + GPU system. They aren't leaving the chipset market yet, but they seem to be aware that the market won't exist for much longer.
    • by mgblst ( 80109 )

      Sometimes these rumours turn out to be true, despite the protestations of the company. There are many examples out there, iphone, banks, etc...

  • by UserChrisCanter4 ( 464072 ) * on Monday August 11, 2008 @09:15AM (#24554579)

    My guess is occupying the same sub-par penny-pinching section of the market they always did. Save $10, and in exchange you got to deal with chipsets that often had fundamental flaws, known bugs, and drivers that fixed some problems while causing others.

    But don't worry, because said chipsets were often located on "high quality" boards that could always be counted on to be constructed in the cheapest manner possible. Bad caps? That's too easy; I want heatsinks that fall off the chipset, voltage problems on PCI slots, and physical layout that looks as though it was designed by a blind man using NASA's English-to-Metric conversion tools.

    To this day I am convinced that a large amount of the "Windows Sucks and always crashes" reputation in the post-9x era is due largely to VIA, SIS, and (God help us) Acer Labs (ALi) coupled with the sub-par manufacturers that leaned heavily on these chipsets.

    • I have one older PC that had this sort of problem - until a driver update that brought a workaround.

      AFAIK the VIA chipset had a fundamental flaw in the first place (data loss on the PCI bus under high load) but such flaws happen to other vendors too and a workaround in the driver is usually acceptable. In this case, the problem showed up in the field and VIA only fixed it after getting bad publicity.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by wendyo ( 168574 )

      except intel has always been the number one chipset manufacturer. and guess what, if you put linux on the same box it doesn't "suck and always crash".

      • by UserChrisCanter4 ( 464072 ) * on Monday August 11, 2008 @04:24PM (#24559867)

        Wow, way to miss the point. I've worked with plenty of Intel-based systems and in the post-Windows 2000 world, they're generally every bit as stable. Say what you will about security and usability (there's plenty to complain about there), but I don't hear a lot of people complaining about stability much anymore. That simply wasn't the case with Via's 4in1 trash or SiS's, well, anything they built.

        You're right in that Linux sometimes survived on the same box; after garbage chipsets had been on the market long enough, the kernel developers had figured out which features would and wouldn't cause problems. Kudos to the developers for having the time and drive to write proper drivers when Via never could be bothered to do so in the first place. Windows did, at points, have patches to fix issues with Cyrix processors (for example), but it's a little ridiculous to expect Microsoft to go write workarounds for sub-par gear. Likewise, it was a little unfair to blame them for what was really the fault of uber-trash drivers and physically faulty hardware.

    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      I've had various VIA, ALi and SiS chipsets which had a poor reputation, and yet had very good stability under Linux...
      Similarly, Cyrix CPUs had a reputation for causing stability problems, and yet i had several cyrix based machines running for years without incident. One of the cyrix systems was given to me by someone who got sick of it's instability while running windows. His replacement system fared little better.

      I'd say it was more down to drivers than hardware, windows systems often end up with a horrib

  • by blind biker ( 1066130 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @09:22AM (#24554641) Journal

    The ultraportables is a fast growing market, and if, as I suspect, VIA focuses on cheap low-consumption CPU + chipset, they are in a great position to capitalize from this market.

    • by Hektor_Troy ( 262592 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @01:42PM (#24557961)

      Only kinda. I'm yet to see a cheap Mini-ITX, Nano-ITX, Pico-ITX board from Via. They're always very expensive. Especially when you compare them to the Atom options today. The cheapest Via I can find is their EPIA ML8000AG with an 800 MHz C3 processor costing almost twice as much as Intel's D945GCLF with a 1.6 GHz Atom or Intel's D201GLY2 with a 1.2 GHz Celeron.

      Back when Via were the only ones with Mini-ITX boards the premium was somewhat okay, but not any more.

  • SiS? (Score:2, Interesting)

    I haven't seen a SiS chipset in years! Do they still even make anything that is used? Honestly, I haven't used anything but NVidia in the last few years and they quite frankly work REALLY well!
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bhtooefr ( 649901 )

      For a while, Intel was using exclusively SiS chipsets on their low-end (read: developing countries) motherboards.

      Their last SiS-based board, though, was just replaced with an Atom board with an i945. Which was a mistake, because the i945 guzzles much more power than the old SiS chipset. It's funny when you have a tiny little heatsink on the CPU that wouldn't look out of place on a southbridge, and then a big huge heatsink with fan on the northbridge.

    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      I just threw out a machine based on an SiS motherboard, it was a P4 2.8ghz and maxed out at 2gb of ram, don't think it even supported SATA.
      The machine was a bit quirky, sometimes it would run for months on end without problems, then get into a state of never staying up for more than a few hours and keep rebooting for a few days.... Then it would go and run for another few months problem free. It may well have been heat related tho, it always seemed to be hot summer days when it would go weird, but none of t

  • by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @09:34AM (#24554761) Homepage

    ...I'm not sure how they'll do without, but look at what's happening with the latest processors. The memory controller and more and more other things are moving into one and the same chip. it won't be long before laptops are essentially one chip with traces going out to all the accessories = much simpler than today because almost all the heavy lifting is inside the chip.except memory and the only reason I don't see that going in is because none of the players have taken any interest in that.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by mikael ( 484 )

      That trend has been happening for the past 40 years. If you looked at a 1990's graphics accelerator card (Hercules Graphics Station Card [uni-marburg.de] or a Voodoo 5000/6000 [sudhian.com], you would see that all the different components (RAMDAC, graphics processor, memory controllers) were all on different parts of the circuit board. Now, most of that logic is within a single chip Geforce 9800GTX [legitreviews.com]

      Memory chips keep changing as rapidly as the CPU's do. Assuming that a CPU manufacturer wanted to enter the memory chip market, by the time th

      • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Well, if we go back to more efficient software we could conceivably make do with just the cache on modern processors...
        Intel are shipping quad core chips with 2mb (or 4mb now?) cache per core, i remember having a computer with 2mb total.

  • how do I feel (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Zashi ( 992673 )
    I'm quite ambivalent about this. On one hand, fewer chipset makers means fewer chipsets to have to beg for specs for or reverse engineer. On the other hand, lack of competition may make the chip makers more lax towards following specifications and standards.

    I suppose overall I don't feel good about this move. Can't really articulate why. This doesn't seem auspicious for us enthusiast builders who like to pick out individual components based on their individual merits. (In my experience, VIA chipsets have

  • by Coolhand2120 ( 1001761 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @09:53AM (#24554987)
    From hell's heart I stab at thee!

    I hate VIA if you didn't gather that already. I've spent more time puzzling over ACPI, bus mastering, faulty IRQ sharing, piss poor drivers that VIA has made than all other OEM's put together. Even if you have a fully functional Intel chipset board /w Intel chip and Intel video card - add a VIA USB card and POOF! There goes your stability. All I can hope for is that they go completely out of business and perhaps have a few higher-ups in the company spontaneously combust.
  • Hey, couldn't they move into communications and call themselved VIACOM? ... oh, wait.
  • Who the heck is going to make chipsets for AMD motherboards now? I used via for years, now they are gone, then I used AMD, which they no longer make chipsets, and my current motherboard has an nVidia chipset? Is this the death of AMD, cause it seems as if the only people still making chipsets now is Intel

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by bestinshow ( 985111 )

      AMD are making chipsets (having consumed ATI who were making them before), haven't you read the reviews? Look at the AMD 790GX chipset, or the 780G ...

    • by sricetx ( 806767 )
      Umm, just a guess, but I would bet that AMD will make chipsets for their boards under their ATI brand. No need to proclaim the death of AMD (yet).
  • by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:03AM (#24555097) Journal

    I was so badly 'wounded' by this chipset as most enthusiasts were that to this day I've never considered a VIA chipset since, most likely an irrational fear but one thing I can't stand is an unstable computer.

    I've used nvidia chipsets, intel chipsets, even SIS chipsets but VIA only once and it stung, I have to wonder how many enthusiasts avoided them due to the 133a fiasco.

    • I had a K8T800 motherboard for an old AMD 3200+ processor. It was considered state of the art and cutting edge and all that...how the mighty have fallen.

      • I had a K8T800 motherboard for an old AMD 3200+ processor. It was considered state of the art and cutting edge and all that...how the mighty have fallen.

        Agreed, I own two boards based on VIA chipset - K8M800 and K8M890, and I must confirm they're as stable as any intel based system would be. And perfomance is really well too.

    • For me it was a KT266 motherboard right after your generation. I didn't learn my lesson and figured, "What could possibly go wrong with a kt133a that they hacked a new memory controller onto?"

      Turns out I enjoyed memory latency worse than SDR RAM and bandwidth that barely topped the old chipsets, but I got to spend twice as much for the privilege!

  • Godfuckdamn (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Quattro Vezina ( 714892 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:03AM (#24555099) Journal

    I used to be a big Via fan, back during the K7 and early K8 days. This saddens me, even though I buy 100% Intel nowadays (Intel CPU, Intel chipset, Intel motherboard).

    Man, AMD buying ATI was possibly the worst possible decision they could have made. They raped their third-party chipset support, drove off Linux users en masse, and blew all their capital on an acquisition instead of the R&D they desperately needed, hence why Core 2 has lapped Phenom several times.

    • Re:Godfuckdamn (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bestinshow ( 985111 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:22AM (#24555341)

      "lapped" ... it's about 20% faster clock for clock, and the top clocks are about 20% higher, so that's about 44% faster at the most, and certainly not if you start scaling to multiple CPUs where AMD is still leading (check out the 4P 16C benchmarks for AMD against Intel).

      AMD now have an in-house chipset maker who are making some very well received and functional chipsets (AMD 790GX for example), have improved Linux support incredibly (Day 1 Linux Support for HD4000 series graphics cards, drivers were on the shipped CD).

      I think you are seeing the natural integration difficulties in 2007 and this year as a long-term issue, whereas it is clearly a short-term issue. Barcelona was flawed even before the acquisition, R600 was an underperformer before it as well. RV770 and the fixed Phenoms are good options now, and there are good vibes for the coming year as well.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ilgaz ( 86384 )

      NVidia chipsets and their software drivers created such a complex problem that it took hours for a mega advanced low level hacker like Mark Russinovich to solve.

      http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/06/02/3065065.aspx [technet.com]

      That is the only chipset competition Intel/AMD now have after VIA exit. A company which definitely have no clue about chipsets and what users/manufacturers expect from a chipset. It is basic: Stability and Performance, zero installation except well maintained, WHQL certified dri

  • Many years ago ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by overshoot ( 39700 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:03AM (#24555101)
    The 486 hit the market and the only chipset support available was from 386 chipsets with kludged logic that covered the differences, notably in clock timing. This did not make Intel happy, since it resulted in processors coming off the line with no homes waiting for them.

    In response to this fiasco, Intel engaged more directly with the chipset vendors; at the time, VLSI Technology was the leading one. Intel was in the process of coming out with the original Pentium, and VLSI needed detailed specifications so that they could have chipsets available when the processor debuted. Intel promised VLSI information as quickly as Intel's own engineers had it.

    Since VLSI had an operation in Chandler, very near Intel's own chipset design operations, VLSI inevitably heard when Intel started up their own chipset team. VLSI was understandably concerned that they were becoming dependent on cooperation from a company that had gone into competition with them, and approached Intel. Intel reassured VLSI that Intel's team would not have any "unfair" advantage over VLSI's engineers, and reiterated that VLSI would have processor specifications as soon as Intel's engineers did.

    So, VLSI worked away at their design. Intel released the final Pentium specs, and the Intel chipset engineers accomplished an unheard-of feat: they finished their design, streamed out the chip, fabricated it, packaged it, tested it, and released samples the same day!

    Later, Intel found other ways to make life difficult for chipset companies, such as suing chipset vendors for using their bus designs or pricing the processor plus chipset at the same price as the processor alone. This has periodically led to chipset vendors deciding that the business isn't worth it, followed by Intel screwing the pooch with a chipset design, followed by Intel realizing that having more than one chipset provider is good for the processor business, followed by Intel making nice to the chipset vendors, lather, rinse, repeat.

    Here we go again. This could be the last time around the merry-go-round, or maybe not.

  • Editors? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Godji ( 957148 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:14AM (#24555231) Homepage

    Although VIA will still be developing chipsets for integrated motherboards featuring the Nano CPU, but will no longer produce chipsets for Intel and AMD CPUs.

    Although this contradicts the headline directly, but it is also gramatically incorrect.

  • I would like to see a CPU + coreboot (Linux) embedded with a connection block as a single monolithic unit. Defeats the necessity of having an installed OS chosen by the hardware vendor. I would guess this type of product would be vastly more competitive.
  • by moteyalpha ( 1228680 ) * on Monday August 11, 2008 @11:08AM (#24555977) Homepage Journal
    Some small company named BIM had this problem and I remember some other letters too, VLB , MCA. I could be a little dislicex today but I do seem to remember that BIM made a mess of that business when they tried to create a monopoly in the MCA. Perhaps Intel will make the same mistake as his father Lord Vader.
  • It makes sense to exit this business. The future is clearly integration of more support functions onto the same part as the CPU. The support chipset is going the way of the separate FPU, the separate MMU, and the separate graphics controller. The future at the low end is one big part plus RAM.

  • Once of the biggest mistakes a company can make is to continue to exist in a market that has little to no return and not pull the plug before it's too late. I think this is a good thing for VIA. I applaud VIA's management for having the foresight to exit that market before it ate them alive, not to mention they can focus more on their x86 CPU market and work on perfecting their chipsets that work directly with their own CPUs.

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce

Working...