The Third Party Chipset Market Will Ultimately Disappear, Says Via

About ten years ago, Via Technologies was considered one of the leading developers of core-logic sets. The company left the business of manufacturing AMD- and Intel-compatible chipsets, and said in a recent interview that we would witness the disappearance of the market of third party chipsets that are compatible with microprocessors manufactured by Advanced Micro Devices and Intel Corp.

The company quit this business in order to focus on the development of its own platforms and x86 microprocessors. Via took this decision about a year ago, and everybody seemed to believe that it was an illogical move, since the firm was rather dependent on the sales of chipsets designed for AMD and Intel processors. Now, Via says it made the right choice and is confident on its actions, especially since its Nano processor proved to be a competitive product.

"One of the main reasons we originally moved into the x86 processor business was because we believed that ultimately the third party chipset market would disappear, and we would need to have the capability to provide a complete platform," said Richard Brown, vice president of corporate marketing at Via Technologies, in an interview with Custom PC website.

Mr. Brown also said that both AMD and Intel would start at a certain moment to provide chipsets exclusively designed for their processors.

"Intel provides the vast majority of chipsets for its processors and, following its purchase of ATI, AMD is also moving very quickly in the same direction," Mr. Brown added.

If the third party chipsets for AMD and Intel CPUs are approaching their end, then both Nvidia Corp. and Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. will have to leave the chipset market, the same way Via Technologies did. Recently, Nvidia denied the rumors that the company is going to spin off that business. Yet, it looks like neither Nvidia nor SiS have great chances against AMD and Intel, especially given the aggressive promotional campaign these two have begun for their chipsets.