VIA has acquired Cyrix from National Semiconductor in the second half of 1999. The acquisition facilitated the entry of VIA into the processor business.

The company on Thursday announced the launch of its new processors VIA Cyrix III 650 MHz and MIA Cyrix III 667 MHz in the Indian market. The other processors of the company, Cyrix III 500, 550 and 600 are already available in the market.

VIA has appointed Karma as an exclusive distributor for Cyrix processors in India. Karma will sell these processors to assemblers and end consumers through a chain of its dealers in India. Karma is also a distributor of Segate hard drives and Hyundai's memory in India.

The company is selling the processor at a competitive price in India to get an edge with Intel and AMD in the market. The Cyrix III 500, 550 and 600 are priced at Rs 2,400, Rs 2,800 and Rs 3,200 per unit, respectively. The two new processors, 650 and 667 MHz, which would be available in India after a week, will be sold at Rs 3,800 and Rs 4,000 respectively.

Announcing the launch of new processors, Mr Richard Brown, director of marketing, VIA Technologies, said that these are company's highest-speed processors for the value PC market. "Built on an advanced 0.18 micron manufacturing process, the processors feature a 128KB Level 1 cache and support for a 100/133MHz Front Side Bus to ensure robust performance for the better productivity and Internet applications," he added.

He said that VIA will soon be launching higher processors such 700 Mhz and above and hope to launch 1 GHz processor by mid 2001. " VIA is committed to provide OEMs and System Integrators with an economical solution for building competitively priced PCs targeted at value conscious consumers and businesses, he said".

He said that the new generation VIA Cyrix III processor can provide Indian resellers and System Integrators with a high-speed, low power consuming solution that is ideal for building highly affordable PCs. VIA Cyrix III processor based PCs can deliver excellent software application and Internet performance ideally suiting education, home and business users, he added.