VIA has a pretty long and glorious record when it comes to producing low budget but high performance motherboard chipsets. Indeed, for many shoestring performance PC enthusiasts VIA has achieved something nearing saintly status.

Unfortunately, like all other saints, it seems that as far as the VIA motherboard chipset business is concerned it too will soon be dead.

According to reports VIA is to focus on x86 processors and integrated motherboards. Vice President of Corporate Marketing in Taiwan for VIA, Richard Brown, has told Custom PC magazine in the UK that it effectively sees no future in producing chipsets for the likes of AMD or Intel.

"One of the main reasons we originally moved into the x86 processor business was because we believed that ultimately the third party chipset market would disappear, and we would need to have the capability to provide a complete platform" Brown said, adding "That has indeed come to pass."

Of course, the small matter of Intel making its own chipsets now that it owns ATI, and AMD following pretty much in the same direction, sort of accelerates the decision to quit.

Quite where this leaves players such as SiS, other than looking increasingly isolated and vulnerable, remains to be seen...