Interview with Timothy Brown
June 3rd, 2008Late last week I was able to do a quick email interview with Timothy Brown, International Marketing Manager for Ultra Mobile Products at VIA. This is my first interview, so hopefully I didn’t do too bad. 
Thanks again to Tim for taking the time to do an interview.
HP2133guide.com: How does VIA see itself positioned in the market in the next five years?
Tim: In the next 5 years VIA sees itself becoming an increasingly important player in the processor platform business across the embedded, desktop and mobile spaces. Presently we are very strong in the embedded space and the 3rd player in the mobile and desktop space. However with yesterday’s official launch of the VIA Nano processor we see our product portfolio now having all the necessary performance ranges to better target the mobile and desktop spaces also. I think you can see with products like the HP2133, and the 30 other mini-notes presently on the market based around VIA processor platforms that we are very aggressive in the fast growing mobile space.
What were the goals VIA was trying to reach with the new OpenBook reference design?
The VIA OpenBook basically simplifies the process for many of our customers to enter the mini-note market. Our goal at VIA as a silicon design company is to go a step further with our customers and provide them with more than just our power efficient VIA C7-M processor and ultra mobile platform, but provide them essentially with the blueprints for a mini-note device that can provide great performance to the end user, can be easily customized for their market in terms of style and design, and provide a host of internet and broadband cellular connectivity options for their customers.
With the success other companies are having with their mini-notebook sales, why is VIA only releasing reference designs and not your own VIA branded computers?
VIA’s cores strengths are silicon design. We don’t see any magic “silver bullet” type product that will completely dominate such personalized product areas such as mobile computers. So we don’t strive to create one. What we do is focus on creating power efficient processor platforms and reference designs that can guide and enable many different talented customers and brands to bring their various visions to the market. We’ve been very successful with that strategy with 16 design wins globally on the market today based on our VIA NanoBook reference design and in total over 30 mini-note designs based around our VIA C7-M processor.
How will the new Nano processors stack up against Intel’s Atom and AMD’s Puma CPU’s?
Very well! Real world benchmarks from products commercially available for all of these CPUs have yet to be seen but we’re confident that the performance and TDP for our VIA Nano processor will be a perfect fit for several market segments. We’ve been leaders in the low power processing platform markets with our VIA Eden, C3 and C7 processor platforms for over 5 years and now that our vision of a mainstream mass market based around miniaturization and power efficiency is coming to fruition, Intel is moving into our space. We’ve been doing Mini-ITX for years and we did it first. We know this business and their needs well. We are well prepared.
The Laptop Magazine blog has attributed VIA’s Richard Brown as saying “VIA is not concentrating Isaiah on mini notebooks, but rather, that the chip is intended for higher-priced 12- to 14-inch systems.” Even though there are three ultra low voltage chips announced does VIA still not intend for the Isaiah/Nano to be in a mini-notebook?
I think what we’re saying is that the performance of the VIA Nano processor is well targeted for mainstream 12-14″ systems today. However as the mini-note segment expands (which it may do quickly as its the fastest growing segment of the notebook market at the moment) and it further breaks down into different segments by price/performance even OS and hardware configurations you’ll see that we’ll have between the VIA C7-M and the VIA Nano processor something appropriate for the whole segment. Since we don’t sell systems directly ourselves, its up to our customers to see when is the right time to jump in with a higher performance VIA Nano processor.
Can you talk about any upcoming products that will use VIA’s new Nano processor?
All I can do is assure you that we do have design wins with brand name customers that will be announced in the near future. Unfortunately as its their products being launched we need to respect their privacy and launch schedules.
Update: TongFang has a Mini-Note powered by the Nano
I recently blogged about my first mobile computer. What was yours?
Before I even owned a notebook I had what I really I think of as my first mobile computer… a Psion Revo. I loved it.. and… lost it! Heartbreaking. Also I never could manage to get the 3rd party app that was supposed to be able to display power point presentation on it to work. I always imagined walking into a meeting with that little baby and plunking it down next to a projector and wa lah! However it was very good as an organizer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Revo
If you could pick any one device running off of a VIA chipset with a 9″ or smaller screen, what would it be and why?
Well I have to say I’m on the right website to answer this question… HP2133 is the one for me. Great keyboard for my sausage fingers, superb screen and build quality make it an easy choice.
Thanks for the interview Josh.
Thank you for your time Tim. Good luck at Computex next week!
