20% of tablet PC are white-box, and most use VIA processors

A new story on Digitimes suggests just how successful the VIA Wondermedia chips are in the tablet PC space. Apparently 20% of global tablet PC shipments in Q1 this year were white-box models.
"Currently, most white-box tablet PCs are adopting 7-inch resistive touch screen panel with VIA Technologies' VIA8650 processor and the Android 2.2 operating system for a price as low as only NT$2,000 (US$69) ... "
Because they end up in tablets that don't carry a brand name and, let's face it, are sold as ultra-cheap tablets on eBay and Alibaba, VIA's success doesn't get a lot of headlines in the white-box tablet PC story.

VIA developing processors for servers

XBit Labs have published a very short little article that suggests that VIA are planning on developing a microprocessor just for the server market. The quote from VP Richard Brown that this seems to be based on is a little less certain however. He says "Our processors have been used quite extensively in low power blades for data center applications, and we are currently evaluating our future strategy and roadmap ..."
VIA Nano processors were featured in an innovative blade design by Dell a few years back but they never gained any real traction in the server market, which is dominated by the Wintel combo.

VIA agrees that BAPCo tests don't accurately reflect real world usage

AMD's PR agents would have lost some sleep last week over the media backlash that has accused them of being bad sports over how well Intel CPUs compare to AMD's in the most recent flavor of BAPCO SySMark benchmarks. AMD said they were pushed out of the BAPCO group and that the tests are not equal and not transparent.
Now VIA has come along and also decided to resign from the BAPCO group, with similar concerns. A VIA spokesperson said:
“We strongly believe that the benchmarking applications tests developed for SYSmark 2012 and EEcoMark 2.0 do not accurately reflect real world PC usage scenarios and workloads and therefore feel we can no longer remain as a member of the organization."
Oooh ... another disgruntled ex-member of the BAPCO group.

China needs 4G chips: VIA amongst crowd of companies wanting to supply them

China's mobile phone industry is just absolutely huge. The uptake of 3G in the country, however, has been surprisingly low. The biggest telecom operator in China, China Mobile, is moving ahead with 4G plans and along with Sequans Communications, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Innofidei, and Hisilicon Technologies, VIA is wanting to supply the hundreds of millions of chips required for the 4G handsets to be sold in China. More at Shanzai.com.

VIA's QuadCore targetting ... well, everything!

While Intel and AMD target their quad core processors at high end gaming rigs only (coupled with massive cooling) VIA says that it's low power consuming QuadCore chips are suitable for mainstream desktop PCs, laptops and servers.

"The new 1.2Ghz x86 chip offers a TDP (thermal design power) of 27.5 watts, which is about 21 percent more energy-efficient than comparable chips from Intel and AMD, according to Via officials. They said the chip could be used in everything from desktop PCs, notebooks and small form-factor PCs to all-in-one PCs and mini-servers." - eweek.com

VIA announces new Vinyl audio controllers

VIA has been in the business of producing audio codecs and controllers for ... must be over twelve years now. VIA AC97 was the most common audio controller on desktop motherboards for a time. Then came the VIA Vinyl audio controllers, also featured on desktop motherboards, and the high-end Envy24 controllers that were found on third party sound cards. VIA has today joined the two monikers together in their announcement of the VIA Vinyl EnvyUSB VT1730 and VT1731 audio controllers.

The chips are designed to be featured on USB sound cards and professional level audio equipment like headphones, audio hubs, MIDI devices, recording consoles, etc. The VT1730 is 8-channel whilst the VT1731 is 2-channel.

"The VIA EnvyUSB VT1730 and VIA EnvyUSB VT1731 also support the I2S standard enabling Blu-ray Disc™ audio content protection; solutions without this feature dramatically reduce audio quality to that of a regular CD, with a sampling rate of only 16-bit/48kHz."

Find out more in the official Press Release.

VIA Labs gets new VL701 chip certified as first USB 3.0 controller for hard drives

VIA Labs has been able to boast of being the first in a number of designs over the last couple of years. The VL701 Low-power USB 3.0 SATA Bridge Controller is the design to get USB-IF Bus-Powered certification for regular hard drives.

"Featuring an industry-first fully-integrated 5V switching regulator, the VIA Labs VL701 Low-Power USB 3.0 to SATA Bridge is a single-chip solution that achieves the highest power efficiency while offering users transfer rates up to 10 times that of USB 2.0."

VIA Labs will be hoping for a lot of sales of the new chip:

"Cal-Comp Electronics and Communications, a leading Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) and Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) that contracts with many name-brand customers worldwide, adopted and integrated the USB-IF Certified VL701 it into its upcoming USB 3.0 external storage products."
-Source.