New Chips from Via Seen as Potential Rivals to Intel, AMDNew Chips from Via Seen as Potential Rivals to Intel, AMD

Taiwan-based chip manufacturer Via is expected to announce its first high-performance x86 chip, suitable for use in mainstream notebooks and desktops, later this month."It puts us into the mainstream market for the first time," said Richard Brown, vice president, corporate marketing at Via. The Isaiah chip, like the others in the Via line, is expected to be a low-power processor like Intel's Atom. However, it uses a more complex "superscalar" processing design that may enable it to deliver higher performance than Atom.

Because of a shortage of Atom processors, some second-tier Chinese PC manufacturers are looking to use Via processors (not necessarily the Isaiah chips, which aren't yet available) for their low-cost PCs.CNET News, DigiTimes