VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today introduced its new VIA Nano 3000 Series processors, bringing enhanced digital media performance and lower power consumption to Windows 7 thin and light notebook and all-in-one desktop PC markets.

Based on the 64-bit superscalar 'Isaiah' architecture, VIA Nano 3000 Series processors deliver the most compelling thin and light notebook computing experience with their rich HD entertainment capabilities, including support for flawless playback of high bit-rate 1080p HD video, as well as low power consumption resulting in longer battery life.

Freedman also lists "just a few challenges" to such a move. "In addition to the technical challenges of supporting an x86 product family, we believe Nvidia's fabless model is a headwind for manufacturing leadership in mainstream CPUs, namely 1) TSMC and other foundries may be unable to provide the most leading-edge geometries, 2) Foundries do not have processes optimized for high-yield, high-volume CPU manufacturing (though the Atom-license by TSMC is a step in the right direction, 3) Die size and performance may not be fully optimized by foundries as manufacturing investments address a broader range of semiconductor customers' needs, 4) Platform development costs are likely to be underestimated, and 5) Nvidia's brand recognition outside of the gaming community may be less than expected.

Basically this one is a wait and see.

Looking at the coming year, AMD's challenger in the performance stakes will be the upcoming hexa-core Thuban processor, apparently clocked at 2.8GHz and coupled with an RD890+SB8xx chipset. In the mainstream space, 45nm Athlon and Phenom processors with up to four cores will hope to be more competitive when paired with the 800-series chipset.

Now, AMD as a company does have one huge - albeit very temporary - advantage here right now: all the pieces of the puzzle are in place for quite a while. Namely, a reasonably fast (but could be faster, please) CPU core in those 6-core Istanbul Opterons and their coming desktop equivalents, complemented by a very fast HyperTransport 3 low latency, high speed - up to 25.6GBps per link for version 3.1 - interconnect protocol between CPUs and I/O, as well as performance-leading GPUs in the ATI Radeon R800 family. Both the CPU core and HyperTransport are stable, proven old-timers, with stuff like FPGA accelerators and ultrafast supercomputing cluster network links already being hosted on the Opteron HyperTransport combo for years. There's even the HTX slot spec for I/O cards hitting directly into system memory.

In additional news, AMD will also bring forward the launch of its six-core desktop CPU codenamed Thuban to the second quarter of 2010. Thuban adopts a 45nm process and socket AM3 packaging, while featuring six 512KB L2 cache, 6MB L3 cache, and a core frequency of 2.8GHz.

AMD is also phasing out several CPUs. Price cuts were also implemented in a few models. You can of course check AMD CPU pricing here.