CES 2011: VIA Nano X2 shown at CES 2011

Rossi Fernandes • January 10, 2011, 10:51:53 IST

Intel’s Atom and AMD’s Bobcat will still be out of reach.

VIA hasn’t been in the news for a long time, since their days of motherboard chipset manufacturing, to be precise. VIA has been focusing their efforts and resources on low power processors, of which the first VIA Nano processor was released in 2008 after several years in development. At CES this year, they announced their Nano X2 processor, which is a dual core version of the processor running on the Isaiah architecture.

Still behind the times

The new processor is based on the 40nm fabrication process. The processors come with SSE4, native 64-bit support, VT CPU virtualization technology, and VIA PadLock hardware security features. The new processors will also be compatible with previous VIA Nano, VIA C7, VIA C7-M and VIA Eden processors. VIA claims that their new processors will have twice the cores while maintaining low power consumption levels.

The new processors will be targeted at desktops, all-in-one PCs and notebooks. This might be to compete with similar products from Intel and AMD. Intel currently dominates the low power desktop and mobile market. The VIA Nano X2 is currently available for OEM manufacturers and first products built around the new processors are expected to be out within Q1 2011.

Written by Rossi Fernandes

Our resident Hardware Ninja, Rossi, lives for speed - by uhh riding his bicycle. He's Tech2's utility man, dividing his time between cameras, software and intense bouts of Quake III. He's also a fan of all things obscure, case in point, Live for Speed (sic). Never heard of it? We rest our case. In his spare time he tries to teach our new joinees the tricks of the trade even though the blood sweat and tears, but give him a camera and all things forgotten. see more