TUXIA and VIA Gang up on Internet Appliances

TUXIA, a German manufacturer of embedded Linux software for Internet appliances and thin clients, just let us know that it will collaborate with VIA Technologies to develop an integrated solution for Internet appliances. The collaboration will combine TUXIA's embedded Linux software line, TASTE (TUXIA Appliance Synthesis Technology - but what about the "E?") with VIA's Apollo core logic chipset. TASTE will be integrated with the VIA VT6009iTX reference design board and VIA Apollo PLE133 chipset to run Internet appliances like multimedia set-top boxes, web terminals, and PDAs. TASTE is based on the Linux kernel version 2.4 and features a Mozilla browser called Nanozilla, and a suite of middleware that includes a terminal emulation suite, a RAM-based software design, and a field upgrade mechanism. The VIA Apollo PLE133 chipset gives you built-in AGP2X graphics capabilities, flexible front-side bus settings, support for PC133 DRAM, and the Trident Blade3D AGP graphics engine. The companies seem to figure that giving OEMs a silicon and software bundle that they can pretty much drop into products will help them get the gadgets to market quicker. The PLE133 chipset kind of sounds like overkill for little things like PDAs, but I guess the two companies are trying to come up with an all-encompassing solution that can be used for a variety of applications. Bet the whole shebang will work just fine with a Via x86 processor.