Via to disclose 'Nehemiah' MPU at Microprocessor Forum

Via to disclose 'Nehemiah' MPU at Microprocessor Forum
SAN JOSE--During the Microprocessor Forum here today, Taiwan's Via Technologies Inc. described more details about its next-generation C3 microprocessor, based on a new and so-called "Alternate Instruction Set" (AIS) technology.

The company also dropped more hints about another processor, which is said to be a clone of Intel Corp.'s Pentium 4 chip.

At present, Taipei-based Via is shipping its C3 processor line for use in the low-cost and embedded side of the computer business. The current C3, dubbed Erza-T, is a 0.13-micron chip that operates from 900-MHz to 1.1-GHz.

At the conference today, Glenn Henry, founder and president of Via's Centaur Technology subsidiary, gave an update on the next-generation and long-awaited C3 processor, code-named Nehemiah.

"It's radically different than Erza-T," Henry said. "We are also competitive to the Celeron," he said during a presentation today. The Via executive was referring to Intel's Celeron family of low-cost processors.

Based on a 0.13-micron process, Nehemiah is a 1- to 1.5-GHz processor, built around copper-interconnect technology. It also includes 64-KB of cache and MMX+SSE multimedia instructions.

Featuring a 52-mm square die-size, the processor includes so-called "CPI Throttling" and AIS. The AIS technology is reportedly an extension to Via's C3 processors. Nehemiah is expected to be shipped this year.

At the conference last year, Via also disclosed plans that it was developing a "Pentium 4 clone." Informally called the CN, the processor is pin-compatible with Intel's Pentium 4 chip, according to Via (see Oct. 16, 2001 story ).

Henry briefly talked about the CN, but did not provide any details at the Microprocessor Forum.