IBM already has given PowerPC specs and documentation as open source, for free. I.e. if you and I were to open a chip foundry, then we could design, make, and sell PowerPC cpu’s without limit. By the way did you find a couple of hundred million dollars in your couch? I am going to check mine and if we do, then we could start making them ourselves!!!

Super Coco,
The real issue here is not giving up. I.e. either do it yourself or find the answer from someone else. I have done a number of difficult/seemingly impossible things. Only because I did not give up. Sometimes I had help and sometimes I did not. I admit that getting help can be harder than just doing it yourself.
VIA will not ever be a complete full line competitor to Intel, and that is just fine. I don’t expect to hear that VIA is THE chip that all of the hardcore gamers want. However, it is good at what it does, low power and efficient cpu’s.
Also there are more than just Linux and Windows in the embedded os space.

> VIA has some really good hardware in the works

100% agree. I have blogged several times about VIA having good hardware products ruined by their support and drivers.

Peter,

It’s great that you see VIA as a real competitor for Intel, but your words prove that you have never tried to get the VIA video driver working on Linux and that you haven’t tried to get 3D or video hardware acceleration from recent VIA chipsets.

If you said “VIA is a true competitor for Intel only in Windows”, I’d agree to that.

Regards

Thanks for stopping by our blog.

I am totally down with the under dog in any contest. And I really don’t want to see Intel run away with this market. Speaking of which, I stumbled upon a first full review of 1.6Ghz Atom:

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7595&Itemid=40

No comment.

It would be cool to see IBM step out a little. They seem to be too content making CPUs for consoles and their high end servers. I am not sure how effiecient their current CPUs are (I have heard an XBOX 360 can generate some heat, maybe thats just the GPU?). They certainly are not affraid to collaborate with other companies and I guess anything is possible.

Unlike Super Coco, I would very much like to buy VIA solutions, as I, along with everyone else who has two brain cells to rub together, don’t want a defacto Intel monoploy in the PC world. A Nano/nVidia product could be very interesting. I would also like to see anyone beyond IBM to supply PowerPC chips to the general user. Right now IBM solutions and extremely expensive. That could be a future project for VIA or nVidia. I’d buy one and install OpenSuSE on it, as I have done on an old G4. Further, it seems that you (Logic Supply) have found a way to get Linux on VIA products. We should all remember that the most satifaction comes not from doing the easy things, but from succeeding in the hard things.

Thanks for reading my post!

I understand your frustrations with VIA support, both with direct user and Linux. They are aware of the fact that they do not currently offer all the support that their customers deserve. VIA is also always striving to improve themselves in this regard.

Now I wasn’t trying to downplay Intel’s presence here. I was just trying to let people know that VIA has some really good hardware in the works. On the contrary, the Atom is very exciting. I think it really targets the heart of what this form factor is about. But, every tech site on the planet has covered this story to exhaustion.

It is also nice to know that people, like yourself, who have lost complete faith within VIA now have a true VIA alternative.

I plan on making more contributions to our blog in the future, thanks for your support.