VIA Isaiah Architecture in the Media

The announcement of the new VIA Isaiah Architecture for x86 processors received strong coverage by a broad range of media outlets including business and tech media, as well as mainstream publications.

Processors using the VIA Isaiah Architecture will be used in a range of notebooks, Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs), and power efficient green desktops, and will go into production during the second quarter of 2008.

Business/Mainstream Publications

"This is a significant improvement over their previous generation, and that makes it a more competitive product in a growing marketplace."

"[VIA's] strength has always been the extended battery life it permits through the low wattage of its microprocessors. With Isaiah, it says the power demands will be the same, but the Isaiah chip will perform two to four times better than its predecessor.

The performance boost could even make VIA a competitor for the microprocessor slot in full-sized PCs… a move that would certainly get the attention of both Intel and AMD."

"VIA Technologies, Inc. a tiny competitor in microprocessor chips, has a head start in a new market that giant Intel covets."

"It's a significant improvement over the C7… Assuming that they deliver on the schedule they are quoting, [Isaiah] should be a very good product for them."

"Growing demand for small, handheld computers has created new customers for the low-power C7. This segment of the market is expected to grow quickly in coming years. And the market will get a further boost year when Intel announces its Silverthorne processor and makes a concerted effort to promote these types of devices."

Technology Publications

"VIA Technologies may command only a tiny portion of CPU the market, but by focusing on power consumption rather than top performance they have managed to carve a niche out for themselves in the ultra-small form factor and low power markets. Now we are about to see the fruits of its Centaur acquisition with the upcoming Isaiah processors, which are expected to provide double the performance of the current VIA C7 chips but consume the same amount of power."

"If you would have told me last year that I would be able to sit down and play Crysis on a VIA low power CPU, well, I think I would have to had called BS on that, but I did just that yesterday. That get your attention?"

"Some portion of the x86 processor market will be receptive to Centaur's low-cost, low-power proposition, and I suspect that portion of the market will grow substantially in the coming years. Whatever happens, I must admit that the low-cost, low-power, make-it-adequate pitch sounds much better when served alongside a modern 64-bit superscalar, out-of-order CPU architecture like Isaiah."

"The Isaiah is a truly competitive part when compared to current offerings from AMD and Intel.  It is a out-of-order, superscalar design which utilizes multiple decode and execution units that take it a big step above the previous C7 processor.  In fact, many of its design aspects do remind us of Intel’s Core 2 Duo, but with a mind towards overall power consumption."

"Via's especially proud of its floating point unit performance, which it says is the world's fastest, and its "aggressive" power management features. Henry said he expects his chips to outperform those forthcoming from Intel, codenamed Silverthorne."

"VIA probably isn't the first company you think of when compiling a list of CPU manufacturers, in fact most people would probably get as far as Intel and AMD then stop, but in certain specialised areas it is actually a fairly big player. The OQO Model 02 UMPC we reviewed last summer, for example, packed a VIA CPU. It should come as little surprise, then, that VIA is coinciding the full-scale launch of Intel's Penryn architecture with a revision of its own, and in some ways it is perhaps equally impressive."