The VIA Isaiah was originally scheduled for a launch during the first quarter of this year, and although the processor is already sampling, the release of the CPU is still a tad late and expected to make it to market sometime during next quarter. The obvious target for the low-power CPU is of course embedded machines, the one area where Via tends to shine in year after year. Via is betting heavily on the growth of this market over the next two to three years, which will be crucial for the company that is otherwise standing against behemoths like Intel and AMD.

The Isaiah CPU is a 65nm to 45nm 64-bit CPU that will have a TDP of 25W at 2GHz. Sadly however, it may be falling short to mobile Core 2 CPUs due for release later this year. In particular, the Core 2 Duo P8400 will run at 2.26GHz and is expected to carry a TDP of 25W, too. Isaiah should outperform their previous generation CPUs by two to four times at the same clock speed, according to VIA, but will it be enough to compete against the Core 2?