VIA has pledged to provide a version of its Eden x86-compatible processor that consumes just 1W when running flat out at 500MHz. Idling, the chip eats up a tenth of that total, making it what VIA claimed was "the world's most power-efficient x86 CPU".

The latest in VIA's Eden ULV family runs on top of a 400MHz frontside bus and contains just 128KB of L2 cache, so it's not exactly up there with the fast desktop number crunchers from Intel and AMD. The Taiwanese chip maker said it was pitching the part at embedded systems, claiming the part could form the basis for complete devices that consume less than 10W in total - a fraction of the power Intel's Core 2 Duo alone uses up.

The 90nm VIA chip includes the company's on-die encryption algorithm accelerator, PadLock. It supports Intel's MMX, SSE, SSE 2 and SSE 3 multimedia instruction sets.