Digitimes writes: "The second round of the chipset competition will soon begin in March with designers such as VIA Technologies and Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) launching more high-end products, of which many will be showcased at CeBIT Hannover.

Hoping to gain the lead in the market, chipset companies are picking up a specification battle that is demanding higher specifications in memory architecture, north bridge FSB (front-side bus) speed and peripheral interfaces on the south bridge. Besides the advanced DDR333 and DDR400 architectures and AGP 8x mode, many chipsets also support a 533MHz FSB to support Intel’s new-generation Pentium 4 processors.

Besides chipsets, VIA plans to showcase its new 8235 south bridge chip, network chip and processor, while SiS has decided to introduce its latest graphics chip offering, the SiS330."