TAIPEI — Via Technologies is denying a local media report that said it is considering the sale of its CPU unit, which has been a source of losses since the company bought it four years ago.
The reported buyer is Transmeta Corp., also a maker of low-power CPUs and a competitor of Via in the embedded market.
Via insisted Thursday that it made little sense for the company to offload its CPU division at this time. "We think it should breakeven this year so it's still a sustainable business," said Richard Brown, Via's head of marketing. "It would be insane to get out now just when business is improving."
Brown said Via is starting to make inroads into the embedded market space and said the rumor of a sale was meant to scare off potential customers. He also noted that Via's motherboard division, which was created last year as a means to sell unlicensed Pentium 4 core logic, is now focusing all its attention on small form-factor embedded designs.
Via created the CPU division in 1999, merging two separate acquisitions of CPU design teams from National Semiconductor Corp. and Integrated Device Technology Inc. Originally, Via hoped to take on the likes of Intel Corp. in the mainstream PC business, but it backed away from that notion long ago, opting to focus on emerging markets interested in cheaper CPU technology that was "good enough."
More recently, the company has launched a platform approach for embedded systems, with the low-power Via C3 CPU and Via chipsets as the core of the system.
Via sells several million CPUs a year, using an advanced 0.13-micron manufacturing process at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., but it still hasn't reached the economy of scale needed to make the business profitable.
RSS
Digital
HDD roadmap:
The hard disk drive (HDD) industry finds its lifeblood in a technology roadmap. The areal density roadmap describes the number of magnetic bits per unit area on the disk platter--thereby defining the storage capacity.
10 CEOs out in 2009:
It's been a tough year for the global electronics industry and CEOs. We survey the dismissal of 10 industry CEOs during the first three quarters of 2009 and what's ahead for the rest of the year.
Top 10 IC vendors with cash:
The world's biggest IC companies by revenue rank not only among the best in their respective industry segments but are also more likely to have huge piles of cash that can be used to fund acquisitions, R&D and product development
10 companies in trouble (revisited):
What follows is an updated version of 10 companies in trouble. Some companies have been removed since the last version, others remain. Still others have been added to the mix.
MIPS to go after the cellphone?:
ARM dominates the global cell phone market, and many industry observers scoff at MIPS as a viable player in mobile phone designs. But MIPS disclosed that over the next one or two years' time, there will be MIPS-based handsets shipped.
Hot technologies to watch for in 2009:
Every technologist, marketer, industry analyst and reporter on a hunt for the next big thing is bracing for the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show scheduled less than a month away.
Notable women in microelectronics
EE Times has compiled an international list that celebrates women who are business and technology leaders in microelectronics.
EE Times updates Silicon 60
Seventeen companies have been added to the lastest version of our Silicon 60 list of emerging startups. Forty-three companies survived as emerging companies that are still worth watching.
RSS| 
Digital| 
Mobile
