Just one day after Nvidia announced its 9400M graphics solution for netbooks, VIA today announced a new 3-chip silicon platform that promises to bring HD performance to ultra compact systems.
Codenamed "VIA Trinity", the new platform meets the performance requirements notebooks and mini-notebooks while it uses much less board real estate than traditional 4-chip platforms, yet still within a comparably low power envelope.
The VIA Trinity platform is a triple-punch combination of a VIA processor, VIA MSP and S3 Graphics discrete GPU designed to deliver DirectX 10.1, Hi-Def video, Blu-ray and Windows Vista to the SFF desktop, notebook and embedded markets.
VIA's focus on power efficiency at the silicon level has enabled the integration of all chipset core logic, memory control, IGP, peripheral and networking connectivity, and multimedia functionality into a single-chip solution, such as the VIA VX800 media system processor, allowing for the addition of a discrete graphics accelerator without blowing the space or power budget.
"With Mini-ITX 2.0, we declared that small form factor meant no compromise on essential technologies or performance. The VIA Trinity platform is a natural extension of that philosophy for ultra compact systems," said Richard Brown, Vice President of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. "This platform leverages VIA's long-standing expertise in shrinking the form factor to deliver a truly high definition experience in small devices, perfect for a variety of lifestyles and applications."
VIA processors such as the VIA Nano processor are the bedrock of the VIA Trinity Hi-Def platform. The first 64-bit, superscalar processor in VIA's portfolio, the VIA Nano processor provides scalable, power efficient performance. This is coupled with one of the VIA system media processors, integrated digital media IGP chipsets featuring the 800MHz VIA V4 front side bus.
The S3 Graphics Chrome onboard graphics accelerator supports the latest DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL graphics architectures, HDMI output and playback of the latest Hi-Def content with the Chromotion HD 2.0 video engine. Chrome brings hardware acceleration for all video standards including H.264, MPEG-4, VC-1, WMV-HD and AVS.