Chipsets

The eternal race: Intel versus AMD. What do you see and why in each market? To which market are you focusing, which of them has a more profitable future in your opinion?

The processor market is extremely interesting right now. Intel in particular is pushing up clock speeds very quickly, and will be at least 3GHz by the year-end while AMD is working on the Hammer with its integrated memory controller. Both approaches will of course lead to higher and higher performance. What concerns me though is that despite all these increase in clock speed, the overall market is very slow right now and consumers and businesses seem less and less willing to pay a premium for this entire extra horsepower. The problem is that there are very few - if any - applications out there to take advantage of it. We've been pleasantly surprised by the reaction we have received to our low power VIA Eden mini-ITX platform. You get the feeling that many people are now looking for something different from their computers. Sure, they want adequate performance, but at the same time other factors such as low noise and smaller form factors are becoming more important.

SiS is probably your number one competitor, besides Intel. They had some "deep sleep" for years, however, with the SiS 645, 650, 645DX and the SiS 745, they made quite a comeback. Do you see them as a possible threat to your Pentium 4 / Athlon solutions? How do you plan to counter them?

Right now the chipset market is becoming more and more competitive, and to stay ahead we need to continue to deliver products with leading-edge features and performance. We have a very solid track record in that regard, and are confident that we can continue to maintain our position in the market.

Not only SiS, but Intel is progressing very fast. After the much debated RDRAM chipsets, Intel 845D is gaining popularity, and Intel 845G/GL/GLL will be launched at very good prices (at least for Intel). How are you planning to counter Intel?

As I mentioned in my answer to the previous question, this business is getting increasingly competitive, and we have to continue to improve our products to retain our leadership position in the chipset market. While the 845D is certainly very popular, we are now moving ahead with our P4X333 - which is delivering some great performance numbers. From what I've read on the web, Intel won't have a comparable solution until September at the very earliest.

Another key point that is worth mentioning is that the real battle this year is going to be in the South Bridge. The integration of faster I/O controllers (USB 2.0 and 1394 FireWire), wireless (802.11b and Bluetooth), faster drives (ATA/133 and Serial ATA) is becoming most important. We recently launched our new Southbridge VT8235, which is the first solution on the market to integrate both USB 2.0 and ATA/133. It is also ready to support Serial ATA and 802.11b in the future, whenever these technologies are mature enough. So here again, we are ready to answer the demand from the market in terms of connectivity.

Could you tell us something about the licensing dispute between VIA and Intel, regarding the Pentium 4 bus? SiS has agreed to pay and it seems as if one of the biggest complaints about the P4X266/A is the lack of the license from Intel, as the chipsets perform admirably otherwise. Isn't VIA at a disadvantage because of this?

Unfortunately we can not comment on that at this moment.

ATi and nVidia: are they worthy competitors in the chipset market now? And in the future?

While I would never underestimate Nvidia, they have had a lot tougher time gaining traction in the chipset market than they'd originally expected. Their initial integrated chipset was way too expensive, and its performance didn't match the hype they had created. Now they are aggressively promoting their DDR266 solution, while we have moved on to DDR333 with the KT333. So as long as we continue to execute on the product side I am sure we can retain our leadership position.

ATI have even more to prove than Nvidia on the chipsets. While they've announced their intention to do chipsets, we haven't seen any real product yet and I think it's going to be very tough for them to execute on the desktop side. When ATI made their announcement at CeBIT, many of the motherboards they showed even featured a south bridge from VIA! That has to make you wonder how ready they really are with their products.

Which is your most and least profitable chipset?

That's a very interesting question... (laughter) But unfortunately I can't answer it.

Please tell us something about what's cooking in your lab!

The next chipset we are planning for Intel Pentium 4 platform is P4X600, targeted at the workstation and entry level server segments. If features dual channel memory support and will also support 64-bit PCI through our forthcoming VPX-2 companion chip. On the integrated side, we are developing P4M333 chipset, which would enable DDR333, AGP 8X and a faster V-Link 8X support; and most importantly it would integrate a new graphics core - Zoetrope.

We are also working on both integrated and discreet solutions for upcoming AMD Hammer processor, but unfortunately cannot talk very much about those at the moment.

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