VTF 2001 Opening Press Conference
Today at 2 PM Taiwanese time and thus in the European morning or in the American night VIA opened its second annual technology forum VTF in Taipei with a press conference. The opening words came from VIA’s Director of Everything (officially ‘Marketing’) Richard Brown (in the picture on the very left), who also introduced the panel members. Besides VIA’s CEO Wenchi Chen (sitting in the middle) the panel was comprised of representatives of the six ‘diamond sponsors of VTF’ or strategic partners of VIA: Scott Stetzer, Technical Marketing Manager, Maxtor, Mian Quduess, Director of Technology Enabling, Samsung, Paul Rudnick, GM, desktop & server group, 3Com, Tom Eby, Group VP, AMD (strategy & business development), Desi Rhoden, President, AMI and Eddie Wu, Director, Microsoft Taiwan.
Rambus Buddy Samsung Confesses To Be DDR-Fan
While five of those six sponsors are known to be partners of VIA for quite a while, it was surprising to see a representative of the Korean memory maker Samsung at the panel, who told us about the exiting outlook at the upcoming DDR333 and DDRII memory technology. After all Samsung is known as close partner of Rambus Inc. and as the largest provider of RDRAM memory. It is interesting to see that even Samsung has suddenly become a big fan of DDR-memory technology.
VIA And Maxtor Introduce Ultra ATA/133
Scott Stetzer, representative of the hard drive giant Maxtor introduced himself with a reference to the new Ultra ATA/133 IDE protocol, which was officially launched today. VIA’s brand new VT8233A south bridge chip is the first to support Ultra ATA/133. It is pin compatible to the already known VT8233 and VT8233C south bridges, which are used with VIA’s SocketA chipsets Apollo KT266 and KT266A, VIA Pentium 4 chipset Apollo P4X266 and VIA’s Socket370 chipsets Apollo Pro266 and Pro266T. Future motherboards with those chipsets can from now on be equipped with the new south bridge chip to enable ATA/133 on those platforms.
The new Ultra ATA/133 protocol of VT8233A allows IDE disk transfer rates of up to 133 MB/s, once connected to a Maxtor ‘Fast Drive’ hard disk. Maxtor’s ‘Big Drive Technology’ (also part of Ultra ATA/133) enables 48-bit addressing and thus hard drive sizes of more than 137 GB. More than 137 GB might finally provide the space for an installation of Microsoft’s future WindowsXP-successor or upcoming hyper-realistic 3D-games for GeForce747 chips, but the initial target of those hard drives is of course digital video. You will soon be able to record ten years of Jay Leno’s Tonight Show and all of his lame jokes (including the one about the ‘country Scandinavia’, where he proves his excellent knowledge of geography).
Don’t mix up ‘ATA/133’ with the upcoming standard ‘serial ATA‘. Maxtor and VIA see ATA/133 as an interim solution between the known ATA/100 standard and the upcoming serialATA-standard, which is expected to become available to consumers in about a year’s time. So far neither Intel, nor Seagate are willing to support ATA/133, but these things can change very quickly, should ATA/133 become a success. Besides VIA and Maxtor, the new standard will also be supported by SiS and probably ALi.
Memorable Quotes Of Wenchi
Wenchi underneath the VIA halo
VIA’s CEO, Wenchi Chen, was once more in excellent shape today. His answers in the Q&A session of the press conference signalized an outstanding self-confidence. Light heartedly he commented on an ‘awful second quarter’, openly speaking the mind of all CEOs in the current IT-business (including mine). It may be one thing to talk about this well-known secret, but it’s another thing to smile when those words come over your lips. When he was asked about the current status of the legal battle with Intel over VIA’s Pentium 4 DDR-chipset Apollo P4X266, he said “my legal advisors suggested not to comment on this issue, but …“. He also proved his talent to become a successful politician with the following sentences:
“I don’t think we are doing anything wrong [… by providing a DDR-solution for Pentium 4 with P4X266]”
“We are trying to do the best for the industry.”
“Customers and the market don’t deserve having to wait [… for a Pentium 4 chipset with DDR-support].”
“Well said, Mr. Chen!” is all that I can say. This opening press conference may not have provided a particularly huge amount of new technical information, but it surely showed that there’s still room for smiles and laughter in the suffering IT-industry. Tomorrow we’ll be provided with VTF’s technology sessions. I already know that it was well worth coming to this year’s VTF.
