VIA Technologies will begin sampling the PT890, an 800MHz FSB (front-side bus) Pentium 4 (P4) chipset supporting dual-channel DDR400 DDRII and PCI Express, next month. Motherboards using the PT890 chipset are expected to be exhibited at CeBIT in March, the company said. With an additional product in its P4 chipset lineup, VIA hopes to overtake Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) in the P4 chipset market before the second quarter of next year. VIA is the third-largest P4 chipset vendor, trailing Intel and SiS. VIA launched two P4 chipsets – the PT800 and PT880 – earlier this year.
VIA has the lead in the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) chipset market, capturing about a 70-80% and 90% share in the K7 and K8 chipset markets, respectively. According to VIA, it ships about three million chipsets a month, with a 50:50 split between Intel and AMD platforms. In addition, company president Chen Wen-chi expects the company"s loss-making processor business will turn profitable next year. SiS plans to begin sampling the SiS656, a P4 chipset supporting PCI Express, in January.