Chipmaker VIA Technologies has announced a single chip which can replace the majority of the key components on a PC mainboard. The chip will go into mass production later this year, and is expected to appear in products next year, sources said today. VIA chief executive Chen Wenchi showed a palm-sized computer mainboard built around the chip, codenamed "John", during a presentation at the Computex trade show in Taipei. Taiwan-based VIA is targeting the new chip, and similar existing products, at mobile devices, thin client PCs, and other devices in which space, weight or power consumption are at a premium.
The "system on a chip" is made by packaging two separate chips so they occupy the space of one. The component chips are VIA"s 2GHz C7-M low voltage CPU and VX700 chipset. The VX700 is an earlier creation which combines two large chips into one, and includes entry-level 3D graphics support. Some earlier products which combined CPU, graphics and other support functions in a single chip have rapidly fallen behind as users have demanded more powerful computing devices.