VIA Technologies announced that it will soon introduce a new processor to its line of ultra low voltage, ULV for short, line of products designed for use in embedded systems and other applications where low costs and extended battery life as a result of low power consumption are critical.

At a press conference, the computer hardware manufacturing company announced that the new product will be an addition to its line of Eden ULV processors. The latest Eden processor will adopt the typical VIA V4 bus for ULV and embedded systems, it will feature a 21mm × 21mm nanoBGA2 packaging die just like any other Eden processor. The new features of this processor are its relatively high clock speed of 500MHz considering that it needs only one Watt of power to function. Looking back some years ago, the 500MHz running processors that were x86 compatible needed a lot more power than the Eden ULV.

According to the news site Digitimes several IPC, industrial PC, manufacturers and vendors, including Advantech, are interested in the new product and end devices featuring the new Eden ULV processing unit are expected to hit the market soon. Lanner, another industrial PC manufacturer announced that it is designing network appliances and embedded boards which feature the latest VIA ULV processors.

In recent years, VIA Technologies focused more and more on the embedded systems market and the ultra portable PC one, planning to launch a new generation of chipsets, named the VX800, sometime later this year. As the company lost the battle for compatible x86 processors as its line of C7 CPUs are not even at the level of the lowest performing processor from AMD or Intel, VIA is now reorienting on markets that value more the low cost and reduced energy consumption than pure raw computing performance.