John H Isacs, Taipei
VIA Looks to the BIG-Time System, Peripheral Chipsets
The world's chipset industry produced over 50 million PC chipsets in 1995 and this figure is projected to grow to 60 million units this year. In this strategically important industry, VIA Technologies, Inc founded in Freemont, CA, in 1987 has emerged as a prominent force. VIA designs and develops a range of system logic chipsets and peripheral control logic ICs for single and dual processor desktop and portable PCs.
The Formosa Group
In 1992, VIA, a US company, became a member of the Formosa Group of Taiwan. Joining a group of companies that had over 10 billion dollars in revenues last year enabled VIA to utilize the greater resources of Taiwan's second largest group and overcome financial problems that dated back to 1990. VIA Technologies formerly established its new Taiwan office in Taipei in 1993. The combination of Taiwan capital and manufacturing capabilities with US advanced product design capability has proven successful formula for VIA Technologies.
Wen-Chi Chen, President of VIA
Wen-Chi Chen, President of VIA, explained the synergy between US and Taiwan operations, saying, "We have about 20 employees in Freemont and 120 in Taipei. Our main products include PC system logics and network IC products. Our clients can be segmented into two parts: from the Taiwan side, most are core makers, the others are OEM clients such as IBM, Compaq, HP, DEC, Acer, Mitac and FIC."
He added: "Being a member of Formosa Group, which also includes First International Computer (FIC) the world's largest motherboard manufacturer helps us in a multitude of ways. After Intel entered motherboard business FIC and other motherboard makers faced huge pressure from Intel. With strong support from a component provider like VIA, FIC and other motherboard makers were better positioned to meet the challenge."
Competitive AdvantageVIA is moving a wide rage of board-resident PC functions onto chips. The result is improved performance, lower power consumption and cost savings. While this is seen as a general industry trend, VIA believes it is moving quicker than competitors. The company sites its strong links with key industry drivers like Microsoft and Intel. In addition, VIA gains high-level CMOS and bipolar technologies from partnerships with major semiconductor suppliers. In new product design this helps VIA to maximize architectural partitioning, unit performance, volume/price ratios plus product quality and reliability.
Another area that VIA believes it has a big advantage over competitors is the company's status as a leader in chip designs based around the very fast processor Pentium Pro. Chen claims that only two companies on the market can compete in this area at present.
Chen said: "What I wish to emphasize is that even at the very highest level of new product technology, you will find VIA competing effectively. From a new technology viewpoint, for example, USB technology, there are only two companies receiving the highest quality results from the benchmark testing of chip sets, that's VIA and Intel."
Winbond Develops Single-Chip
MPEG-2 DecoderJohn H Isacs, Taipei
Winbond Electronics Co, Ltd has announced a single-chip MPEG-2 decoder, the first MPEG-2 product to be made in Taiwan, with an eye to become a leading global player in the digital audio and video segments of the IC industry.
Jack Chang, deputy director of the company's Consumer Product Business Division, said, "Considering our success in MPEG-1, we are the world's largest producer of PC MPEG-1 chips, as well as our increased capacity, it is a logical next step for us to develop new MPEG-2 products."
Winbond MPEG-2 chip, the W9922MF which was said to be the first in a series of MPEG-2 products to come, will be a dual RISC processor and part of the company's solution-oriented chipsets. "In the area of chipsets, we'll be able to provide microcontrollers, video DAC, SRAM, EPROM and even DRAM", Chang said.
Functionally the W9922MF decodes MPEG program, video and audio streams while supporting MPEG-2 main profile/main level as well as MPEG layer I and layer II. The MPEG decoding is embedded in two decoding coprocessors, a video RISC and audio/system RISC. The W9922MF will sport two host interfaces, an 8-bit microprocessor 8051 series bus interface and a 32-bit PCI bus interface.
Winbond will offer a MPEG-2 add-on board and the video module can be mounted on any PC graphics card that supports VMI bus. The chip will operate at 40.5 MHz. Samples will be available for purchase in December 1996 with volume sales starting three months later.
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