VIA will be integrating ATA/100, LAN, audio, and advanced power management into several of their southbridge models sometime in Q3, 2000. Eventually, but not anytime soon, they will integrate IEEE 1394 (a.k.a. FireWire or i.Link), though OEM demand will likely determine if this ever actually happens. While we would like to see IEEE 1394 on more PCs, we're not so eager to see a VIA solution. Several board makers we spoke with told us that the Texas Instruments solution is the best on the market and IEEE 1394 has been known to be problematic without good hardware. VIA is or will soon be shipping a single chip IEEE 1394 solution called the VT6306 VIAFIRE II, which should earn some sales for its low cost all-in-one design.

DDR266, as we said, is coming at the end of this year or early next year. A Pentium 4 DDR part is in the works as well, though VIA is tightlipped about it.

Eventually, we will see a chipset with a descendant of VIA's Cyrix III CPU technology melded to a value northbridge, though such a CPU would likely be aimed at Internet Appliance applications where its likely underwhelming performance would not be as much of a burden. This will give VIA a direct competitor to Intel's Timna, and since Timna is delayed until MTH issues can be completely ironed out, VIA may not be nearly as far behind in the game as previously thought. This chip will also likely go into portable applications where the integrated CPU/northbridge/video paradigm saves on power.