Netbooks and smartbooks with Intel and ARM based processors are getting a lot of attention at Computex 2009. But Sascha from NetbookNews.de took a tour of VIA’s showroom where he found dozens of mini-laptops, nettops, and even MIDs using VIA’s Nano and C7-M processors. While many of these devices will never show up in the US, VIA has been working with a lot of ODM PC makers in China and other developing nations.

While the C7-M processor is around 5 years old at this point, VIA recently released a new VX855 chipset which enables HD video playback on devices C7-M and Nano with processors. In one part of his video, Sascha points out a reference system with a C7-M chip and this processor playing 1080p video while using less than 20% of the available CPU cycles.

Check out the whole video for a whirlwind tour of VIA’s CES showings after the break.

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VIA has produced a reference design for a netbook-sized motherboard that can handle 1080p video playback and 8 channel audio while using a low power VIA C7-M processor. The Surfboard C855 is designed to accommodate a 1.6GHz VIA C7-M ULV CPU on an 800MHz bus. it also uses the new VX855 HD chipset.

The board offers support for 1366 x 768 pixel playback on an internal screen and 1920 x 1440 pixel playback on an external monitor. It can handle H.264, MPEG2, MPEG-4, WMV9, and VC1 decoding. Otherwise, the reference design includes support for all the hardware you’d expect to find on a mini-laptop, including hard drives, solid state disks, up to 2GB of memory, wireless, flash card readers, and so on.

You can check out a video of the reference board in action after the break.

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A Hong Kong company is promoting a new mini-laptop with a 1.3GHz VIA Nano CPU, the new VIA VX855 chipset, a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 576 pixel display, and a choice of a hard drive or SSD. Nothing too new there. But here’s the kicker: The product page is filled with images making it look like this is an Apple product. And it’s quite clearly not.

First, there appears to be an Apple logo on the lid of the computer. And the images show an Apple logo over an OS X-like wallpaper on the computer display. But the netbook is not available with OS X preloaded. It ships with Windows XP Home or Ubuntu 8.04 Linux. Of course, it’s quite probably that you could load OS X yourself much the way you can with other netbooks. But that VIA processor will probably complicate things a bit. Most hackintosh computers use Intel processors, much like the current line of Apple laptop and desktop computers. But at least a few people have managed to get OS X running on machines with VIA’s earlier x86 processors.

Anyway, if this company were based in the US, I’d say they were still in store for a legal smackdown from Apple. Since they’re based in Hong Kong, who knows? But I wouldn’t expect to pick up this MacBook Mini clone in the US or Europe anytime soon.

Update: A VIA rep says he’s never heard anything about this company — and that this product seems a bit fishy considering it’s supposed to use the 855 chipset which was just announced.

via Netbook News.de

Chip maker VIA has unveiled a new low-power media system processor capable of handling 1080p video. The VX855 chipset can handle hardware decoding of H.264, MPEG-2/4, VC-1, and WMV9 video formats. The chipset has a power draw of just 2.3 watts.

The VX8555 chipset is compatible with VIA’s C7, Nano, and Eden processors. The Chrome9 graphics capabilities support 2D and 3D graphics. There’s also an HD Audio controller that supports up to eight audio channels with a sample rat eof 192kHz.

Today’s news seems to fit in nicely with VIA’s earlier announcement of a “Trinity” platform designed to bundle VIA processors, media system processors, and onboard graphics chips. 

via Information Week and Netbook 3G