Taiwan-based media has reported that Via Technologies, a former leader of the core-logic market and now a struggling designer of chipsets for personal computers, was in talks with Intel Corp. about prolongation of a license for Intel’s processor system bus, under which the company can sell chipsets featuring support for Intel’s latest central processing units (CPUs).
Under the terms of the license agreement signed in 2003, Via has rights to develop and sell chipsets for Intel processors till April, 2007, however, the company may not release any new chipsets starting from that time and sell the existing inventory till April, 2008. Given that Intel is about to release microprocessors with 1333MHz processor system bus, Via needs to obtain a license to develop appropriate core-logic, perhaps, with support for high-speed dual-channel memory.
For Via, whose sales dropped from a little lower than one billion of dollars back in 2001 to about $650 million in 2006, it is important to obtain the license to make chipsets for Intel’s microprocessors. But it might not be really crucial for the company’s revenue though. Via’s overall chipset market share has been decreasing for years now, but the company’s sales remained in the range of $600 million (partially because of gradual drop of U.S. currency on the international markets) and even increased a bit in 2006 due to success of Via’s processor and application-specific chip business.
