VIA C7 processor, competition for Pentium M?

Posted on Friday, May 27 2005 @ 22:42 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck

VIA today launched the VIA C7 processor, a new competitor to Intel's popular mobile Pentium M processor. The C7 is based on the Esther core, it VIA claims it is the world's smallest, lowest power and most secure native x86 processor. The VIA C7 is produced on a 90nm SOI process from IBM and the 2.0GHz version uses only 20W at peak levels while idle power consumption is as low as 0.1W. The 1.5GHz has a thermal design power of 12W and the 1.8GHz C7 uses a maximum of 15W.

The VIA C7 processor line is available in 1.5GHz, 1.8GHz and 2.0GHz. The processors use a 800MHZ FSB, have SSE2 and SSE3 support and both 128KB L1 and L2 on-die cache memory.

The C7 processor is aimed at mainstream thin and light notebooks, mini PCs, green clients, consumer electronic devices like media centers and PVRs, high density server and server appliances that need low power, low heat, high performance and high security.

The VIA C7 processor also signals an era of practical pervasive security due to the industry-leading security features of the VIA PadLock Hardware Security Suite, a family of advanced security technologies providing on-die hardware acceleration for key cryptographic operations.

In addition to the world's best random number generator (RNG) and AES Encryption Engine in the previous processor generation, the VIA C7 processor adds SHA-1 and SHA-256 hashing for secure message digests, and a hardware based Montgomery Multiplier supporting key sizes up to 32K in length to accelerate public key cryptography, such as RSA.

The VIA C7 also provides execute protection (NX), providing protection from malicious software such as worms and viruses, and is used in Microsoft Windows XP with SP2. Integrating security directly onto the processor die ensures speeds and efficiency many times that available in software, yet with negligible impact on processor performance.

The C7 chip will go into mass production by the end of this quarter. Benchmark data isn't available yet, besides the chart VIA provided comparing its C7 processors to Intel's Pentium M.




About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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Re: VIA C7 processor, competition for Pentium M?
by Anonymous on Sunday, May 29 2005 @ 1:35 CEST
Will this replace the EPIA?

Im running one in my car :D




  • Reply by Anonymous on Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 18:09 CEST

    It will probably replace the C3 which is the processor in the epias (wich is a mainboard not a cpu)


Re: VIA C7 processor, competition for Pentium M?
by Anonymous on Tuesday, April 04 2006 @ 19:49 CEST
What about providing some real benchmarks?
'Best performance per watt' is absolutely meaningless.
I somehow suspect that any CPU benchmarked in this way will be a trully dismal performer.



  • Reply by Anonymous on Thursday, April 20 2006 @ 19:29 CEST

    I have tested the new chip for over 6 months and the Pentium M is no comparison. If you have a Pentium based notebook, give it away and buy an up to date one with a C7 in it.


Re: VIA C7 processor, competition for Pentium M?
by Anonymous on Sunday, June 11 2006 @ 12:56 CEST
Sites like this exsist because of ad based funding so via proly paid em a lil to see the C7 in a more positive manner :wink: