100 Million and Going Strong

100 Million VIA Chipsets for the AMD Processor Platform Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco - February 24

VIA and AMD recently celebrated the remarkable achievement of shipping 100 million VIA chipsets for the AMD Athlon platform. To give some perspective on how large a number 100 million chipsets is, if you stacked each chipset end to end, it would stretch the length of 67,804 football fields. That's the same distance as New York to Paris!

» Download the video from the event!

To mark this momentous milestone, on February 24, 2005, VIA and AMD welcomed industry partners and friends to a celebration event in San Francisco, at the beautiful and historic Palace of Fine Arts.

Guests had the opportunity to take a trip down memory lane by viewing a vast display of motherboards from leading manufacturers, detailing the historical progression of VIA chipsets for AMD CPUs produced over the last ten years. From one of the very first VIA chipsets for the AMD platform, the venerable VIA MVP3 Socket 7 chipset, through to the most recent K8T890 Pro PCI Express chipset, the "Wall of Motherboards" highlighted VIA's and AMD's commitment to offering innovative products that have met the needs of over 100 million professionals, enthusiasts and everyday computer users all over the world.

Since the introduction of the 7th generation processor architecture in 1999, which first brought the acclaimed AMD Athlon processor to market, and more recently with AMD's 8th generation processors – the AMD64 processor platform - successive generations of VIA chipsets have delivered innovative features and rock-solid stability, enabling the AMD processor platform to maintain its performance crown.

Throughout this time span, VIA chipsets have consistently introduced numerous advanced technologies to the AMD processor platform. While other vendors were promoting the benefits of the alternative RAMBUS RDRAM memory, VIA pioneered the introduction of PC133 SDRAM memory, and then DDR SDRAM memory for the AMD processor platform, realizing these standards had the performance levels and cost benefits to effectively meet the needs of the market. More recently, VIA chipsets have continued this trend with the introduction of new technologies such as PCI Express, Serial ATA and integrated V-RAID storage.

Also on display were a wide range of systems featuring the powerful combination of VIA chipsets and AMD processors, including desktop platforms that power innovation and entertainment in the home and office, server systems that are building reliable infrastructure to drive the digital world, powerful mobile systems for an on the go digital lifestyle, systems that extend the PC platform to new realms, and still running systems from the past that were provided for the event by actual users.

VIA and AMD also paid tribute to strategic partners such as ABIT Computer, ASUSTeK Computer, DFI, First International Computer, Gigabyte Technology, MSI, HP, Chaintech and Tyan. All of these partners were essential in helping VIA reach the important milestone of 100 million chipset for the AMD Athlon processor platform, helping to deliver to the market solutions that offered the flexibility and performance that customers were asking for.

The event provided not only an opportunity for VIA President & CEO Wenchi Chen to present AMD Vice President Dirk Meyer the 100 millionth VIA chipset (which was a VIA K8T890 PCI Express chipset) to celebrate a successful history of collaboration, but also to share their insights on the future of VIA and AMD partnership, and the next 100 million VIA chipsets for the AMD platform.

The milestone of 100 Million chipsets is not only an impressive number in terms of sales, or platforms shipped, but it also represents the strength of the long-term relationship between the two companies. This relationship was cemented in 1997, with signing of a Chipset Technology Agreement, and VIA started development of chipsets specifically for the AMD K6 processor.

Later, with the introduction of the 7th generation AMD Athlon™ processor in 1999, VIA continued to support AMD's leading processors with the VIA Apollo KX133, the first chipset to bring PC133 support to the AMD Athlon. Since then, VIA has launched a chipset for the AMD platform every six months, enabling the AMD Athlon XP to maintain its performance crown as memory and system technologies have advanced around it. And now, as the AMD64 range of 64-bit processors takes on the performance mantle, VIA continues to drive new technologies and performance with leading chipsets such as the VIA K8T800 Pro, and the latest VIA K8T890 with PCI Express support.

Together with AMD, VIA continues to push the boundaries of performance and expand the range of technologies supported on the AMD platform. This celebration marked further commitment by both companies for a stronger working relationship that will continue to lay the groundwork for PC platforms on the bleeding edge, and ensure that the development of the next 100 Million chipsets will be as successful as the first.