VIA are advancing all of their forthcoming South Bridge chipsets as of today with an integrated SPI bus.

The SPI bus is an advanced I/O bus that makes the support of system BIOS simpler and more cost effective through an onboard BIOS programming module. The innovative implementation of SPI on VIA-based boards will enable even easier updating, debugging and reprogramming of BIOS, and at even lower cost, by attaching a flash programming module, such as those from leading provider DediProg, to the easy-to-use onboard connector, even when the computing device is powered down.

For further information, have a read of VIA's official annoumcement folks.

VIA will integrate SPI bus support into new VIA chipset product releases to support all leading processor platforms, commencing with the upcoming VIA VT8237S chipset South Bridge, which is sampling now, and will provide manufacturers with greater flexibility in product design and support.

"We are excited to work with VIA to introduce the SPI bus into the feature set of the new VIA chipset products," commented Chong Tsao, Sales Executive, DediProg Technology Co. Ltd. "Increasingly, vendors and manufacturers need innovative technology to manage and introduce new features easily into the BIOS, and the SPI bus enables them to easily do this."