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Chaintech Evolution Event 2003
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Posted: February 14th, 2003
Written by: Justin "The Sheriff" Woods
Chaintech Evolution Event 2003
VIA spend a lengthy portion of its presentation talking about the convergence of PC and consumer electronics. Though there wasn't a model on hand for us to paw and tinker with, the presenter showed us a movie of the very cool looking HI-FI PC design based on their small form factor motherboards. It can play a DVD without booting to the OS, or boot to Windows later if you want to check your email.
 
The main theme he spoke about, besides the current and future chipset roadmap diagrams, which you can see below, is the industries move to a more "experience-centric" approach to selling PCs. This "radical" new idea isn't really new at all, I mean, when I work in the optical industry years ago, we spoke about lifestyle dispensing all the time (selling eyeglasses for different uses, for example a pair of reading glasses, and a second pair for golfing, and a third pair for driving). AMD touched on this when they launched the XP line with the very confusing CPU names (1800+, 1900+ etc.) through the "True Performance Initiative", which focuses on how applications perform rather than individual components within a PC.
VIA's current K7 roadmap
Expect to see very specialized systems like the HI-FI PC coming to the retail channels in droves. They'll be fairly inexpensive, and will be able to perform most tasks without issue. This also means you can expect to see more motherboards with integrated graphics chipsets, a lot more.
K8 Zenith specs...They probably won't see the light of day now...
Finally, as I mentioned earlier, AMD has postponed the K8, and though rumors and speculation lead us to think they are having issue in one or more of the following categories: yield issues, can't get the CPU clock speeds ramped up, or are having trouble with the on-die thermal diode. I believe IBM has been called in to assist AMD with that one. In any event, the presenter chalked it up to three main points, none of which I mentioned above (since it's all rumor and speculation).
AMD's official reasons:
If they launched the CPU, they'd only be competing with themselves, since Barton (XP 3000+ CPUs) is performing so well.
September is a better time of year to launch a CPU, probably because it boost 4th quarter earnings, and consumer awareness gets higher closer to Christmas.
Better availability of integrated graphics, and AMD can launch the mobile platform in tandem with the desktop CPUs.
September will be "Hammer Time" (oh man, I just HAD to go there didn't I…)
In conclusion...
Intel and Microsoft didn't really have a huge amount of new interesting information. Intel is on schedule to release the ICH5 southbridge, and Canterwood and Springdale look to be very promising chipsets. Microsoft promises not to make another Windows ME (Mistake Edition) between XP and Longhorn, which isn't even due out until 2005.
I had a really eye-opening experience at the Chaintech Evolution Event, both personally and professionally. I got to meet peers from other websites, countries, and niche areas within the industry. I hope Chaintech can successfully enter the US market, as its products look very good (check back soon for a review, I have a few products coming in shortly).
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