Industry-wide recognition
VIA created the Mini-iTX Main-board design as an open reference, meaning anyone can use the board without paying royalties -- putting the design more firmly on the road to mass production. The benefit for VIA comes in industry-wide recognition and the possibility to gain market share in another arena -- the US$29 billion computer chip industry.
The Mini-iTX Mainboard assumes the slimmed down I-appliance or low cost PC will use fewer components and a lower-cost chip that does not need a fan. PCs and notebooks today all come with fans inside to cool down the CPU. Only a handful of companies offer CPU products able to operate without a fan, including Transmeta Corp and some Intel chips like those used in Compaq's iPaq personal digital assistant.
VIA integrated graphics and sound functions on the chipsets used on the Min-iTX and placed its CPU, dubbed C3, on the board. The C3 processor gives off minimal heat, eliminating the need for a fan, while operating at speeds up to 866MHz. Brown said a faster version of the C3 is due out later this year or early next year, it will join the 1GHz chip alongside Intel and AMD.
With the motherboard venture, low-cost PC and CPU, a separate joint wireless technology project in Sweden, a tablet PC and other efforts, Brown believes VIA's efforts will result in the same rapid growth the firm experienced last year. In the meantime, Intel lawsuits and the current tech slump will continue to keep the company busy.
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