VIA Launches Antaur Processor Officially

Dom · Jul 9, 2003, 06:38 AM

VIA Technologies unveiled today its mobile processor based on Nemeniah architecture and branded as Antaur. The chip was first mentioned during the CeBIT Hannover 2003 exhibition earlier this year and practically no additional details have emerged about the processor since then. Furthermore, at this very point VIA does not announce any design wins for its newcomer and claims that we will not see notebooks powered by the chip earlier than in the fourth quarter in Europe and the US, even though such products will emerge in China shortly.

With the VIA Antaur microprocessor, VIA brings us quite a lot of technologies to reduce CPU power-consumption as well as enhance CPU performance.

The Antaur processor is based on the CoolStream architecture that is apparently official brand-name for Nemeniah core. Probably the most tangible improvements of the Nemeniah over a slightly outdate Samuel 2 core is 16-stages pipeline to allow higher core-speed, SSE multimedia instructions, StepAhead Advanced Branch Prediction, 64KB of Exclusive 16-way set-associative L2 cache and a full-speed FPU. Additionally, it features VIA’s own PadLock Data Encryption Engine, a hardware security feature.

Despite of the fact that VIA Antaur’s pipeline is longer compared to older CPUs by the firm, the chip runs only at 1GHz, a not really high speed for the year 2003, isn’t it? On the other hand, it consumes only 11W (Maximum Thermal Design Power) when running at full-speed and 50% less when operating in power-saving mode. Hence, probably performance is sacrificed for longer battery life.

VIA Antaur utilizes good-old Socket 370/AGTL+ front-system bus, so, theoretically may be coupled with a lot of chipsets on the market, though, the most logical move is to pair it with VIA’s own CLE266 core-logic.

According to VIA, the Antaur processor is shipping in volume now. Notebooks featuring the VIA Antaur processor are initially on sale in the Greater China Region, and are expected to be available in Europe and the USA in the fourth quarter of 2003.

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Source: X-BitLabs

Jul 9, 2003, 06:38 AM	#1
Dom DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 12,940 Rep Power: 0	VIA Launches Antaur Processor Officially VIA Technologies unveiled today its mobile processor based on Nemeniah architecture and branded as Antaur. The chip was first mentioned during the CeBIT Hannover 2003 exhibition earlier this year and practically no additional details have emerged about the processor since then. Furthermore, at this very point VIA does not announce any design wins for its newcomer and claims that we will not see notebooks powered by the chip earlier than in the fourth quarter in Europe and the US, even though such products will emerge in China shortly. With the VIA Antaur microprocessor, VIA brings us quite a lot of technologies to reduce CPU power-consumption as well as enhance CPU performance. The Antaur processor is based on the CoolStream architecture that is apparently official brand-name for Nemeniah core. Probably the most tangible improvements of the Nemeniah over a slightly outdate Samuel 2 core is 16-stages pipeline to allow higher core-speed, SSE multimedia instructions, StepAhead Advanced Branch Prediction, 64KB of Exclusive 16-way set-associative L2 cache and a full-speed FPU. Additionally, it features VIA’s own PadLock Data Encryption Engine, a hardware security feature. Despite of the fact that VIA Antaur’s pipeline is longer compared to older CPUs by the firm, the chip runs only at 1GHz, a not really high speed for the year 2003, isn’t it? On the other hand, it consumes only 11W (Maximum Thermal Design Power) when running at full-speed and 50% less when operating in power-saving mode. Hence, probably performance is sacrificed for longer battery life. VIA Antaur utilizes good-old Socket 370/AGTL+ front-system bus, so, theoretically may be coupled with a lot of chipsets on the market, though, the most logical move is to pair it with VIA’s own CLE266 core-logic. According to VIA, the Antaur processor is shipping in volume now. Notebooks featuring the VIA Antaur processor are initially on sale in the Greater China Region, and are expected to be available in Europe and the USA in the fourth quarter of 2003. ______________________ Source: X-BitLabs