Henry, president of Centaur Technology Inc., brought his vision here to the Microprocessor Forum, discussing a roadmap for his company's processor architecture and the road traveled since Centaur, a former unit of SRAM vendor Integrated Device Technology Inc., was bought by Taiwanese chip set giant Via Technologies Inc.

"IDT is not in the PC business. They didn't have the infrastructure or the relationships with other companies to help us," said Henry, in an interview after presenting Centaur's processor roadmap at the Microprocessor Forum. "That was a bad partnership."

He is much more optimistic about being a part of Via, the world's No. 2 chip set company and an up-and-comer in the processing segment. Besides Centaur, the company last year acquired the Cyrix processor unit from National Semiconductor Corp. and snapped up a graphics business from S3 Inc., when that company elected earlier this year to exit that market.

"Via is a great partner," he said. "They have every piece of silicon in the PC segment, and they have extensive relationships in this market. They sell parts to every motherboard vendor in the world."

Henry gave a detailed look at the Centaur roadmap in a presentation titled "Where's Centaur?" The short answer to that is: not here but lots of other places. While the company is five years old and has been shipping products for more than two years, almost all of them are sold overseas, and the current offering, known by the code-name C5A, has not yet penetrated the North American market. Henry said he has already shipped more than 100,000 of those parts, all overseas. And that is likely to be key to Centaur's long-term plan.

Clock jump

The current chip is marketed under the brand name Cyrix, reflecting Via's other processor acquisition. Available at speeds up to 667 MHz, the device will be succeeded next year by the C5B, which is sampling and will hit top speeds in 2001 of 733 MHz, Henry said.

Centaur has also taped out its C5C, due to sample in the second quarter of next year. The road map also includes the Matthew chip, which will merge all of Via's technologies with an integrated S3 graphics chip, a processor core and a Via North Bridge component onto a single die. Looking farther down the road, Henry is planning the successor to the C5 series, the CX chip, and one more step between the two lines with the C5X, which will sample in the third quarter of next year.

Henry's presentation came immediately after a pair of papers from Intel Corp., showcasing its Pentium 4, running at 1.4 GHz. Even Henry could not miss the irony of showcasing his device, running at less than that speed, on the same bill as Intel's latest and greatest design.

"That may be the fastest chip, but it is clearly also the world's most expensive chip," he noted. "We're not competing against them. We're building a microprocessor for other people, who don't need — or can't afford — all that power."

His vision is pretty simple: create a chip that is good enough to run most applications, but cheap enough to appear in PCs costing just a few hundred dollars. Many of these likely will end up in markets outside the United States. "Everything we do is focused on cost," he said. "We can make a profit on a $50 microprocessor, and that will enable a lot of users around the world."

The Via transition
Linley Gwennap, principal analyst for The Linley Group (Mountain View, Calif.) said Centaur is in a much better position now than when it was aligned with IDT. But, he added, the company seems to have spent much of the past year working out the kinks in its new corporate relationship, and its roadmap seems to have stalled.

"The transition to Via really seemed to kill their momentum," he observed. However, now that the company is back on track, it could have its eyes on a profitable market. There is a "huge opportunity" in China and other developing nations.

Ultimately, as much as 5to 10 percent of the PC processor market could come from these low-cost systems sold into emerging markets. While this is not small enough to attract a chip titan such as Intel, Gwennap said it would be ideal for Via.

"We are focused on the largest, fastest-growing potential market," said Henry. "This can enable PCs costing from $200 to $500, and I believe that this will extend computing worldwide."