Dual-core VIA Nano CPUs to arrive in 2010

It seems that VIA isn’t in a hurry to step up competition in the netbook market. Even though their Nano microprocessor has shown to beat the single-core Atom in a number of applications and benchmarks, the rapidly growing market is still dominated at large by Intel, and that may continue to be the case for a long while if a recently leaked roadmap is to be believed.

According to the roadmap, VIA is planning to release its dual-core Nano chip as late as in June 2010, whereas Intel has already begun shipping its first dual-core Atom part. In all fairness, the Atom 330 is aimed at nettops (low cost desktop computers) and Intel is yet to announce plans for a dual-core Atom processor aimed at netbooks, but one can only expect them to have a solution ahead of that schedule – and let’s not forget AMD also plans to enter the market sometime next year with a dual-core chip dubbed Conesus.

Unfortunately, the leaked image does not reveal much of VIA's plans with the new chip, only that it will feature a “new process technology,” bring “further performance enhancements” and that the first samples will be available by December of 2009.