VIA Technologies today announced (http://www.via.com.tw/en/Digital%20Library/PR030408Patentcase.jsp) that VIA and Intel Corporation have reached a settlement agreement in a series of pending patent lawsuits related to chipsets and microprocessors. The agreement encompasses 11 pending cases in five countries involving 27 patents.

As part of the agreement Intel granted VIA a license to sell microprocessors that are compatible with the x86 instruction set but not pin compatible or bus compatible with Intel microprocessors.

So it means there will be no VIA CPUs for Socket 478 / 603. No competition but more motherboard incompatibility..