New Nano has been released for your new netbooks

Don't mistaken the word "Nano" here for the one that's made by Apple. ;-p

This "Nano" comes from VIA Technologies, the underdog company that fights in chipset market against Intel & AMD. But for you, who have purchased HP's 2133 Mini-Note, or who is following the progress of netbook competition, VIA's processor is not a stranger to y'all.

To replace the aging C7 processor, that's used in HP's Mini-Note, and in order to fight heads-on with Intel's Atom processor; VIA has released its next gen processor for netbook: VIA Nano.

Glenn Henry, the head of Via Technologies subsidiary Centaur Technology, said to Brooke Crothers from nanotech in a quick interview: "We just started shipping to customers last week and this week--literally right now."

Henry said there is a lot of demand for larger form factors. "There's a lot of demand to move those things up to higher screen sizes. I've heard customers say they want to build 12- or 13-inch notebooks," Henry said. Uh, oh. Looks like there will be more and more options to choose from, for you who wish to purchase netbooks in near future.

But is the VIA Nano good enough than the Intel's Atom? If you're looking at the flexibility in its architecture, yes it is. Meaning; you can plug in Nano into older C7 processor slot, although there'll be BIOS upgrade needed before hand. But in term of heat generated when in use, Nano is hotter than Atom. Nano needs 5 watts to run at 1GHz speed, while Atom only need 2 watts to run higher speed at 1.3GHz.

Why the difference? Nano uses a more sophisticated superscalar, out-of-order design, while Atom has a more simple "in-order execution" architecture. Because of Nano's more complex design, it may deliver better performance than Atom in some cases.

Brooke pointed out an important remark on why this thermal envelope is so important: "...because it can influence the design of a Netbook-type device. Typically, parts with lower thermal envelopes can go into smaller devices."

So, what is our next step then? Do we need to wait till the VIA Nano featured in new netbooks in the market, or should we wait for the dual-core Atom processor from Intel? Don't sweat yet, my good readers, cause this Nano processor hasn't reach production gate. Henry said products using the Nano processor will not appear immediately. "No product that actually uses this is for sale to the end customer (yet). So the parts we're shipping are going into the (customer's) manufacturing process or development process."

I can't tell much about the rumored dual-core Atom, but as for the Nano, Henry said: "We're working on it. When you see it, who knows. We're implementing it but it's not near at hand."

[blogged with my Treo 750v]