The chipset market is a brutal one. A company can rise to a position of dominance seemingly overnight then miss a product cycle and end up at the back of the pack. In the past two years, VIA has experienced a dramatic rise to the top of the chipset heap. While Intel was running into trouble with their i820 RDRAM problems, and ALi and SiS were completely missing the product cycle, VIA was firing on all cylinders. They met the market's needs with their PC133 chipsets for Slot 1, Socket 370, Slot A, and Socket A, when nobody else was even close. As the only player in town with the right product, VIA's market share and profits grew impressively.

The market looks a bit different today. Intel has released their i815 series with success. The DDR train is finally pulling into the station, and this time around, ALi and SiS are aboard. Additionally, Intel has bowed to market demand and now has an SDR/DDR Pentium 4 chipset in the works. VIA now has to face stiff competition on multiple fronts. Can VIA maintain their position? The information in this article might give us some clues.

Today, we're going to look at what we believe VIA's future plans to be for their CPUs and chipsets. Where it is appropriate, we will show the plans in relationship to past and current products. We compiled this roadmap after speaking with VIA and multiple sources close to VIA at the Platform Conference. We then compared our sources' information and filtered it through our own knowledge to bring you this roadmap.

Remember as you read that plans change. Changing market conditions require companies to adapt. These are what we believe to be VIA's current plans. We will start with what we see are major trends in their roadmap, then we will move on to give specifics about each of their planned chipsets and processors.