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The chip maker claims the new 65nm chips will provide double the performance of its current models, but at the same power draw and within the same thermal envelope.

The new chips will support 64-bit architecture and initially be available in clock speeds up to 2GHz, with a front side bus scalable from 800 to 1,333MHz, dual 64KB L1 caches and a 1MB L2 cache.

VIA first announced the architecture in 2004, but with the specification complete expects the chips to start shipping in the first half of this year.

The new processors reinforce VIA's position in the niche low power, modest performance market which has kept it afloat, even as Intel and AMD have fought over the high end market.

"The introduction of the new VIA Isaiah Architecture is an extremely significant milestone in VIA's processor business," comments Wenchi Chen, CEO of VIA.

"In achieving these new levels of functionality and performance, it provides the ideal complement to our industry-leading family of low power VIA C7 processors and will enable us to further extend our growing presence in the global x86 processor market."