VIA Plans to Release 45-Nanometer Isaiah Chips by 2010

VIA is riding the UMPC wave with its upcoming Isaiah processor, the company's first x86 chip with a modern, superscalar architecture. As more and more companies plan to release new models of low-cost / low performance sub-notebooks, VIA could make a comeback thanks to the puny, yet powerful chip alone.

The CPU manufacturer has offered further details about the upcoming generations of Isaiah processors, although the first Isaiah units will only arrive later this year. According to a news report released by DigiTimes, the upcoming generations of Isaiah will reach stock core speeds of 2GHz , while the FSB will range between 800 and 1333MHz. The new chips will also feature 128 KB and 1 MB of L1 and L2 cache, respectively.

This might sound just sweet, but VIA is committed to further improving the processor and, in this sense, it expects to release a dual-core 45nm design by the end of 2009.

The chip will preserve its cache values, but it is currently unknown whether VIA plans to re-design the chip from scratch or to add another core using a MCM (multi-chip) module. The latter design is widely used by Intel, while AMD has taken the DCM (direct-connect module) approach, which eliminates the north-bridge and uses HyperTransport 3.0 Links to transfer data between cores.

The Isaiah / CN chip has been regarded with large amounts of interest since VIA officially unveiled details about its architecture back in January. This is mostly because it manages to keep power consumption at a minimum (3.5 watts of power at peak loads), while still delivering out-of-order processing capabilities.

However, the dual-core design is estimated to draw about 25 watts, but it has been alleged that it will consume significantly less when operating at lower capacities. Some PC manufacturers have already adopted the chip for their upcoming designs, and Hewlett-Packard is opening the front with its much-appreciated 2133 Mini-Note UMPC.