VIA Nano - Who wants the Nano?
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VIA hasn't been loved by Dell or HP in years. VIA can't keep up with AMD and Intel, so they are pretty much forgotten about in the world of CPUs. VIA is the king of the mini-ITX platform, however. They are going to continue to rule it, and maybe make some headway in other areas as well.
The UMPC market would be right up VIA's alley. Their CPUs aren't the fastest, but they're more than fast enough to run XP. They have a pretty low TDP output and are known as little CPUs that can run all day in a tiny space.
There have been a few UMPCs demoed that feature the new VIA Nano CPU. At Compute 2008 we got to see a demo of one running the new Nano CPU. No price or availability has been talked about yet, so chances are it's either a long way off or simply a proof of concept device.
The other huge area where the Nano could really make a killing is teaming up with nVidia. The VIA Nano is a good CPU, but when it comes to graphics and chipsets, VIA can't compete. If you remember my article about the Intel vs. nVidia fight that is going on, nVidia is now going to work with VIA and their Nano and build a computer with that.
Apparently it isn't much work for nVidia to take the chipset they have for the Centerino 2 platform and tweak it to fit the VIA Nano. The one area that nVidia wipes the floor with Intel is in graphics. This will provide a decent graphics interface, and nVidia won't have to buddy up with their enemy Intel anymore.
The Nano is really going to get a fighting chance now in the mass market. You could actually get the same computer except for the CPU, and we should really start so see some changes from Intel. They do sell the most graphics cores, but they are your basic ones that can't keep up with anything AMD or nVidia. It will take some major investment by Intel to create something nVidia couldn't make. I don't think Intel is in a position to do this right now.
Next: Conclusion >>
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