Processor

[ticktack]

Since VIA has acquired Cyrix, why can't they simply designed their very own similar "Intel+AMD" performance-on-par processor. As their VIA chipsets has been doing it's job well co-existing on AMD based CPU. Then what is hindering their such progress?

 

[potz]

amd and intel devote a lot more resources to their microprocessor divisions. via doesn't have the technology to make a great cpu without devoting lots of time and money to it. designing a good chip can take years, and via's business is focused on chipsets.

 

[Xalista]

Cyrix has never been able to design a "Intel+AMD performance-on-par processor", so why should VIA be able to, now that they have acquired Cyrix...

 

[BurntKooshie]

A few things:

One, VIA made sure that Nat Semi axed a bunch of jobs (namely, the Jalepeno team.... ). A lot of people left the Gobi/Jedi/Canyne/Joshua team (yes, it had all those names). Then they canned the Joshua CPU (original Cyrix III), which was based on the M2 which was based on the 6x86.

That left them with some people from the Joshua team, plus some from the Winchip team. That's a small team compared to AMD and Intel (esp. Intel). So for one, it's the fact that they have less man power.

Another reason is politics. VIA's current cash cow is by making chipsets. They make chipsets for both Intel and AMD platforms, and have been selling loads of them the last couple years, especially since Intel goofed with the i820. VIA doesn't want to step on AMDs toes, because they provide chipsets for their platform, and don't want to compete directly. Same with Intel.

VIAs strategy, at least for now, is this: go ultra low end. Go so low, that both AMD and Intel won't care. Guess where most of the people in the world live...? China and India. Guess what the economies are like in both places? Growing. People will need computers there, but for the forseable future, they'll need to be cheap ones, because most people can't afford high-end systems (well, a Duron system is pretty cheap to make nowadays ). If VIA can capture that market, through low prices, and acceptable performance (acceptable business performance), they'll also gain market recognition over there.

It's not like VIA can't. Infact, they're working on a much more deeply pipelined (I think 18 stage FP pipeline, 12(?) for integer...). I might have the numbers off a bit, but they're going very deeply pipelined, and they'll also be making them superscalar designs. More or less, their current CPUs are beefed up 486s..ie, they can't issue more than one integer or one floating point instruction per cycle (I can't remember if it can issue both per cycle, but I know that both AMD and Cyrix did since the K5 and 6x86 days, and Intel since the Ppro days). I'm not sure when, but they also (finally) have plans for OoO processing.

 

[BurntKooshie]

Xalista -- I'll argue that point to the death The length of time that they were competative was very short lived, but it did happen.

 

[CTho9305]

heheh, beefed-up 486's

 

[Sohcan]

<< Since VIA has acquired Cyrix, why can't they simply designed their very own similar "Intel+AMD" performance-on-par processor >>

Well, it's not that simple. Via has completely different design philosophies than Intel, AMD, and the other high-performance CPU manufacturers. As pm told me once, hand-drawn masks is the key to fast, cool, efficient circuitry; but when you've got millions of transistors, this takes 3-5 years of development and millions of dollars in R&D. Via (and formerly Cyrix) likely rely on automated design tools much more than hand-drawn designs, so their CPUs aren't likely to be as fast. Automated design tools is the reason companies like NVidia and ATi can pump out entirely new graphics chip architectures every 1-1.5 years; these tools are typically used in core-logic chipsets and graphics chip designs, where the ICs don't need to be clocked as fast as the latest and greatest CPUs.

Also, as BK pointed out, Via/Cyrix's architectural designs haven't been as agressive as Intel/AMD in the past. I also believe that the Via Centaur's FPU only runs at 1/2 the global clock speed.