VIA today said it will begin shipping its first single-chip chipset for its C7 and Eden CPUs later this quarter, the better to pitch the low-power x86 processors at embedded applications. Cramming North Bridge and South Bridge components into one chip reduces the motherboard area requirement by 34 per cent, VIA said.

The CX700's North Bridge functionality includes support for up to 4GB of 300 or 400MHz DDR, or 333, 400 or 500MHz DDR 2, all with ECC if required. It can operate a 400MHz or 533MHz frontside bus clock, and it also features an integrated UniChrome Pro graphics core with MPEG 2 decoding and twin monitor support, but can host an AGP 8x slot for a separate graphics card.

The chip can host up to six USB 2.0 ports, four PCI slots, two EIDE devices and two SATA units, be they 1.5Gbps or 3Gbps drives. It also features VIA's Vinyl HD audio system.

The VIA CX700 is expected to be available in volume quantities later in Q2 2006. Pricing was not disclosed. ®