Another VIA-based UMPC problem.

[update: 06.06.06 – CTitanic has done some good work and tested out some possible fixes. Check out the results over at his blog.]

My love of the VIA C7 processor and chipset took a downturn over the last 48hours. I was prepared to wait for the USB/C3 sleep state fix but now another problem has cropped up.

When we tested the Easybook P7, we found, surprisingly, that watching DVB-T (digital TV over terrestrial) using a USB stick resulted in a high load on the processor. It was my understanding that the chipset (VN800) should be able to decode MPEG-2 in hardware and the processor should be dozing off while all the DVB-T activity was going on.

Looking back at CTitanic’s test results on media players and CPU utilisation, it appears that he saw the same thing with DVD content (MPEG-2.) and that’s even with the PowerDVD and WinDVD software which is supposed to be VIA-aware and be able to use the chipset.

Over the last 48hours I’ve been researching the VIA chip-sets and the MPEG-2 decoding capabilities and its becoming clear to me now that there’s no software under windows that actually supports MPEG-2 hardware decoding apart from WinDVD and PowerDVD and we’ve already seen that neither of these solutions works for the VIA-based UMPC’s.

If you move to Linux though, its a different matter. There are a number of efforts to get Unichrome drivers working and the Epios Linux distribution is highly optimised for the VIA chips. I’ve even spoken to the developer and he seems to be getting quite a bit of support from VIA.

So why would VIA create a chipset that can’t be fully utilised under Windows? Is it because the largest percentage of their sales is for embedded devices running Linux? I suggest that they need to put a bit more effort into getting C7/VN800 drivers and/or code out to software developers ASAP otherwise the VIA-based UMPC’s are going to continue to look half-finished. We haven’t even started to test the encryption capabilities (AES, SHA, RSA acceleration) of the chipset which are hugely superior to Intel-based processors. If the same issue occurs with encryption, I’m buying a Q1!

For the time being though, lets keep an eye on EPIOS which seems to be the most advanced operating system for VIA-based PC’s today. If we could convince them to include all the touch screen drivers and if the C3 sleep-state issue doesn’t occur, I think you’d be looking at EPIOS as the most advanced operating system for VIA-based UMPC’s.

If you’re interested in trying out hardware encryption on the VIA-based UMPC’s, check out VIA’s free security software which runs under windows and should support the VN800. Particularly useful is the encrypted drive package ‘Strongbox’ which is downloadable here. Please feed back if you try this out.

Steve / Chippy.