1) Please introduce yourself.

My name is Ben Boyden, and I'm the Marketing Manager for VIA Chipset Platforms.

2) What has VIA learned from their past Pentium 4 chipsets, and what did they want to accomplish with the PT880.

As I'm sure you are already aware, there is an increasingly negligible real world performance difference between the various competing chipsets for the Pentium 4 platform. We have learned that to differentiate our chipsets and bring real value to our customers we need to look at more than raw performance. For this reason, we have focused on integrating features such as Serial ATA/RAID with support for RAID 0, 1 and 0 + 1 levels into the south bridge, and offering support for 6-channel and 8-channel audio.

We also learned that prior to the introduction of the 800MHz FSB for the Pentium 4 platform, there was little justification in implementing a dual channel configuration. We knew that the vast majority of the market was perfectly well served by a single channel memory platform, and we didn't want to pass on extra cost for the sake of a very small performance advantage. With the arrival of the 800MHz FSB, however, the extra memory bandwidth makes more sense and can bring real world benefits. That said, there is of course still a market for single channel configured systems, so we will cater for both.

I should also mention that we have implemented a new asynchronous bus design with the PT880. For the majority of the market, particularly the SIs and OEMs a synchronous bus is perfectly adequate, but we have learned that a small but hardy element of the market are increasingly demanding an asynchronous bus, so they can optimize their systems all they want.

3) Could you briefly explain V-MAP, and who does it benefit?

VIA's unique V-MAP (VIA Modular Architecture Platform) architecture allows pin-to-pin compatibility between various VIA North and South Bridges. For example, the VT8237 South Bridge is pin-to-pin compatible with its predecessor, the VT8235CE South Bridge. Through this approach, motherboard vendors can minimize development costs and speed up time to market by consolidating their product lines on a standard but scalable platform that enables them to meet the diverse needs of multiple market segments through the rapid integration of different feature sets. As an added benefit, V-MAP also allows a common VIA Hyperion driver base that optimizes system performance while maintaining full stability and compatibility and also facilitates technical support.

4) Is DualStream64 simply Dual Channel memory support, or is there more for us to know?

Although DualStream64 is VIA's first dual channel memory controller design, we felt a lot of pressure to live up to industry expectations because of the success of our acclaimed FastStream64 single channel memory controller. Our goal with DualStream64 was to build a smarter more intuitive memory controller resulting in the best memory performance of any chipset on the market. I think the memory benchmarks in your recent PT880 chipset review showed we achieved our initial goal. Some of the DualStream64's numerous design features includes an enhanced data prefetch protocol and improved memory branch predictions for faster access to system memory, and we also included a larger on-chip branch table and tighter read/write turn-around cycles to further enhance performance.

5) Why is the Ultra V-Link so important?

With the introduction of the VIA VT8237 South Bridge, a new 1 GB/s North/South Bridge interconnect was necessary due the high bandwidth requirements from a host of new features such as Serial/RAID and 8 USB ports. If we have a brief look at a couple of the VT8237's I/O features we can do the simple math. 2 x 150MB/s Serial/RAID ports and 8 x (average transfer rates) 60MB/s USB2.0 ports working under full load would add up to over 700MB/s. While this kind of loading is unlikely in a real world environment, VIA was careful to design-in plenty of bandwidth headroom for power users. With the introduction early next year of the new VIA VT8239 South Bridge, the Ultra V-Link will become even more crucial for optimized system performance.

6) Can you shed some light on AGP/PCI locks, and dividers? Will these features for overclockers be present in retail boards.

Most industry insiders are unaware that VIA first implemented an Asynchronous (AGP/PCI lock) bus architecture as far back as 1998. We had the Apollo MVP3 chipset for Super Socket 7 and Apollo Pro for the Pentium II processor. Both chipsets were very popular among the enthusiast/overclocker crowd as VIA was the only core-logic company at the time with an Asynchronous bus design. VIA then moved to a synchronous design philosophy as the general industry thinking at the time was that the synchronous bus architecture provided superior performance and system stability due to better synchronization of data between the FSB, AGP and PCI, as one clock generator controlled all three buses. Turn the clock forward to 2003 and VIA is again producing Asynchronous core-logic designs. We have recently introduced the PT880 chipset for the Intel Pentium 4 platform and early Q1 04 will see the introduction of the K8T800 Pro with Asynchronous bus design and 1GHz FSB for the AMD 64 platform.

7) Tell us a little more about the VIA Velocity VT6120 Gigabit Ethernet Controller.

Around Computex VIA released the Velocity line of Gigabit Ethernet Controllers. There are three chips in the family: the VT6120 for the NIC cards, the VT6121 for the Enterprise market, and the VT6122 which is the chip that will be appearing on motherboards. All three controllers are a joint effort between VIA Networking Technologies Inc. (a recent spin-off of VIA), and Cicada Semiconductor which is a design house based in the US, and a leader in Gigabit PHY technology. What has resulted is a line of Gigabit Ethernet controllers that have excellent throughput, low CPU utilization, and leading PHY performance thanks to a powerful noise-canceling DSP architecture.

Looking at the market in 2004 we fully expect that the PC industry will undergo a full transition from existing 10/100Mbps solutions to Gigabit Ethernet. For users this will be a big bonus as Gigabit Ethernet is fully backwards compatible with their current network, and it will result in better networking performance with existing 10/100 networks as well as a dramatic performance increase if they set up a Gigabit network.

One alarming trend however we are seeing with some of the Gigabit solutions coming out is shockingly poor PHY performance, which really limits the distance that a Gigabit Ethernet connection can operate over. This was never really a problem with 10/100 Ethernet, and we are concerned that, as such, it will catch many users unaware. Therefore, currently VIA is working very hard to educate users and reviewers about what to look for in a good Gigabit Ethernet solution, and obviously we feel that our Velocity lineup will deliver the performance users expect.

8) Anything you can tell us about some of VIA's plans for 2004?

2004 will be an exciting year for VIA. Our main chipset features focus for 2004 will be PCI-Express and DDR II. VIA is working hard with both SIGs (Special Interest Groups) to ensure that the transition to these new technologies will be smooth and swift. We expect the PT890 chipset to be the first commercially available PCI-Express solution. Also early in Q1 04, VIA will introduce the K8T800 Pro chipset for the new 939-pin AMD Athlon 64. The new chipset will include all leading edge features of the K8T800 with the addition of 1GHz HyperTransport FSB and Asynchronous bus design. Several VIA motherboard customers are also planning to introduce 754-pin Athlon 64 motherboards based on the K8T800 Pro. These boards are expected to be hugely popular with enthusiasts as they will provide an opportunity to increase the Athlon 64's FSB from 800MHz to 1GHz. The K8T800 Pro will then be followed with K8T890 featuring PCI-Express. VIA will also unveil several new Vinyl Audio and Velocity Gigabit Ethernet solutions.

9) Thanks for your time.

You're welcome.

Editor's Note: You can take a look at our preview of the PT880 here, but no doubt many of you were curious about some of the technologies unveiled, so we'd like to thank Ben for taking the time to answer our inquiries.

If you got any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.

HOME