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Description: Very Innovative Architecture (VIA) Technologies Inc., more commonly known as simply VIA, is the world’s leading manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. WenChi Chen founded VIA in 1987. He was formerly the CEO of the company. He transferred the employees of Symphony to Taiwan and started the company’s chip production.

Currently, VIA’s top executives are Cher Wang, WenChi Chen and TzuMu Lin. Wang is the company’s Chairman, Chen is its President and Chief Executive Officer and Lin serves as the company’s Senior Vice President.

VIA first started as a chipset designer. Through the years, it has expanded and evolved to develop silicon chips and PC platform solutions. The success of these new technologies made VIA the leading company in the chipset industry.

Three years after its inception, VIA started acquiring different businesses to form its company’s CPU division, graphics division and sound division. In 1999, the companies Cyrix and Centaur were acquired by VIA Technologies. This was the key factor in VIA’s entry to low power x86 microprocessors. In 2001, VIA Technologies ventured into S3 Graphics sector. The joint venture produced high performance graphics.

VIA had a lot of technology firsts. In April of 2001, its VIA Vinyl Six-TRAC product was introduced as the first with a 6-channel audio codec. A year after, the VIA Envy24PT product became the first to have a high definition, with 8-channel audio controller. In October 2003, it brought to market the VIA Eden-N processor, a power efficient x86 processor. A year after, the VIA EPIA N-Series Nano-ITX main board was launched. Its dimensions are 12 x 12 cm, making it the smallest standard x86 platform. In January of 2008, VIA introduced the VIA Nano x86-64 processor. It measured only 11 x 11 mm footprint.

Since VIA is a semiconductor company, it exerts time and effort on the research and development of chipsets. It does not however manufacture its own products. VIA outsources fabrication to a semiconductor foundry. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is one of the foundries that VIA subcontracts its manufacturing and production.

Today, VIA is part of the Formosa Plastics Group. It is registered in the Taiwan Stock Exchange as TSE 2388. The company is mainly operating in its headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan.

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