Introduction

VIA Technologies has been one of the biggest manufacturers of motherboard chipsets. Founded in 1987, VIA has achieved a leadership position in the PC core logic chipset market through it's ability to consistently deliver leading-edge technology at reasonable costs. In 1999, VIA was successful with first-to-market implementation of the PC133 SDRAM memory standard on both the Intel Pentium III and AMD Athlon processor platforms. In the year 2000, VIA proceeded with a joint venture with S3 Graphics to acquire the S3 Savage graphics core. This video core was integrated into many of VIA's cost-effective solutions such as the PM133 and KM133. In 2001, VIA consolidated this success by leading the introduction of DDR SDRAM support for Intel Pentium III, Intel Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon processor platforms.

Due to legal battles between VIA and Intel over licensing agreements of VIA's P4 DDR solution (the P4X266), VIA announced the formation of the VIA Platform Solutions Division or VPSD as we know it in October 2001. This new division was charged with producing VIA chipset based motherboards for all platforms, but so far only Pentium 4 solutions have come out of the VPSD. Today, thanks to VIAARENA, we have our hands on the VPSD flagship; the P4XB-RA.