Inside VIA: Beneath the Hull of WenChi's Ship

VIA's Dual Xeon Chipset

We stumbled across a few points of interest during the tour, and VIA was more open to pictures than we've ever seen any company be when walking around their facilities. A dual processor Socket-603 motherboard for Intel's Xeon processors was conveniently laying on one of the tables; the unique part of this board was that it used VIA's P4X266 chipset, a desktop Pentium 4 solution. Apparently one of VIA's customers is currently using this solution but considering how irate Intel is over the manufacturing of VIA's chipset on the desktop side, it's understandable that the Xeon board doesn't get much public attention.

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A bin full of P4X266 North Bridges - need one?

We later ran into the same board but with the heat spreader on the North Bridge removed and the core exposed. We were told that this particular North Bridge was FIBed to correct some logic problem in its design; the chip hadn't apparently been reassembled after being brought back from the FIB tool (below).

Ever wonder what a North Bridge really looks like?