Senior Vice President Tzumu Lin defines key areas for innovation to enable next generation systems and applications, cites unique examples of digital brilliance inspired by VIA platform technologies

VIA Technology Forum, Taipei, Taiwan, 1 June 2005 - Tzumu Lin, Senior Vice President of VIA Technologies, Inc, today outlined the key platform strategies being implemented by VIA to accelerate the transition to the digital lifestyle during the opening keynote presentation of the VIA Technology Forum 2005 that commenced today in Taipei, Taiwan.

“The growing proliferation of digital content and broadband connectivity has prompted a fundamental shift in industry metrics and opens up exciting new opportunities,” commented Lin. “In order to take full advantage of this transition, the industry must adopt a radically new approach to innovation that enables the tailoring of highly-integrated low power platforms to inspire the development of compelling new products and user experiences.”

Reflecting the theme of VTF2005, Lin noted that inspiration was the next logical development from digital innovation as the industry strives to add more value to traditional PC fields through new customer-focused systems, while seeking to open up new areas of technology application.

Noting the great success that VIA has achieved with its market-leading VIA EPIA Mini-ITX mainboard, Lin demonstrated the innovative new Child Checkpoint biometric security system developed by Taiwan-based BabyHome International and deployed in 20 local kindergartens. With its touch panel screen and highly intuitive software, the system lets children ‘check in’ by thumbprint on arrival at school and automatically notifies the parents by SMS, providing a failsafe attendance record and providing parents with complete peace of mind.

Lin also highlighted how San Francisco-based Capricorn Technologies has leveraged the low power profile and unrivaled reliability of the VIA EPIA Mini-ITX Mainboard to create the PetaBox, a super high-density server cluster that is being used to store over 1,000 Terabytes of movies, music, pictures, concerts and other data being preserved on the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org), a ground-breaking project that has been documenting the remarkable growth of the Internet for a decade.

In the Petabox, a single 19-inch rack of forty VIA EPIA Mini-ITX based nodes can support up to 64 Terabytes of storage space - equivalent to 7200 hours of HDTV, 64 million X-Ray images, or 16 million high quality MP3 files - at an average of only 50 watts per Terabyte, not only significantly reducing overall system costs but also minimizing air conditioning and space requirements.

“Innovations like the Child Checkpoint security system and the PetaBox both provide exciting examples of the creative new products that our highly-integrated low power platforms are inspiring,” commented Lin.

Lin then turned to the VIA pc-1 Empowered Connectivity Initiative, stressing the importance of emerging markets as a means of empowering people through technology. Given that only an estimated 700 million people out of the global population of 6.2 billion have access to PCs, and with the massive education, information, business, and entertainment resources available on the Internet, Lin reiterated that enabling the next 1 billion “digital have-nots” is the primary objective the VIA pc-1 Initiative, and invited industry partners to work together with VIA to achieve this objective.

“Bridging the digital divide is a critical challenge for the whole industry,” concluded Lin. “We welcome our partners to join with us to develop innovative solutions that will proliferate PC and Internet usage across the world, helping more people to help themselves by enabling them to make more informed choices about their lives.”