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VIA also to acquire Centaur (IDT's x86 division)

Posted by sengan on from the trying-to-address-different-markets? dept.

VIA has announced that it will be acquiring Centaur, the designers of the WinChip. This follows its recent agreement to buy Cyrix's high end processor business from National which retains the low-end MediaGX family. Why buy two x86 design houses? Perhaps to address two markets: the information appliance market with IDT's x86 which is slower but remarkably small, and the PC market with Cyrix's Socket 370 designs.

1 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. RE: Sounds like a good plan to me.... by Spooks · · Score: 2

    Think about it for a minute.....
    Right now, Intel does *not* have a current generation chipset product in the market (810 and 820 are being 'reengineered' to support SDRAM instead of RDRAM)
    Plus, they're behind with Coppermine.

    AMD is losing money like crazy, and everyone seems to think they aren't going to be able to meet market demand.

    Now, in comes VIA. They buy Cyrix and IDT. Cyrix produces Super7/Socket7 CPU's, and so does IDT. Cyrix was also planning on (and NatSemi had the licenses, which VIA got through them) to produce Slot 1 and Socket370 chips. VIA has the chipset products for Socket/Super7, Slot1, and Socket370. Current generation chipsets (133 mhz FSB). So, VIA has the product lineup that no one else has, plus they can contract out their manufacturing.

    Anybody see a winning combination maybe?