As the media take their turn at assessin the Nano DC and VN100 chipset - which will bring dual core VIA CPUs to market, PC Perspective have laid out a detailed introduction before they look at the hardware ... a history of VIA from the late 90's until now.
"Arguably VIA’s biggest success was the Apollo Pro+ chipset. This was a product well ahead of its time in terms of features and performance. During this period Intel was trying to push their 800 series chipsets with RAMBUS support, but that particular combination was unpopular due to the extreme price differences between SDRAM and RDRAM. Intel tried to rectify this situation with a Memory Controller Hub which supported PC100 SDRAM. Unfortunately, that hub had some real issues, one of which was corrupted data.
VIA came to the rescue with a true PC133 SDRAM based solution, which also supported (unofficially) the 133 MHz FSB that was used by the Pentium !!! processor. It also was paired to a southbridge which featured ATA-100 support, as well as plenty of USB 1.1 connections. VIA also had quite a bit of success in the AMD market as well with their KT series of chips for both the classic Athlon architecture, and the first examples of the Athlon 64. A combination of increased competition in the AMD market by NVIDIA and ATI, as well as constant legal battles with Intel over the use of their particular front side bus licenses, caused VIA to have a drastic shrink in their chipset business. "
If you're new to the industry or to VIA, it's worth a read. The overall conclusion of the review is good ... a "well designed and balanced setup", although released a little late :/
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