According to the unofficial, but pretty reliable sources, VIA Technology’s subsidiary VIA Network Solution (VNS) has received a huge order on their LAN chips from Hua Ching. There is no information in regards pricing and quantities, though, the sources that are familiar with the situation said that the value of the order is really high and is estimated in tens of millions of Taiwanese Dollars (TWD/NT).

Hua Ching is an ASUS subsidiary targeted for cost-sensitive Asian market. The company will offer mainboards based on chipsets from Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) this month. The first line of products will consist of SiS645, 645DX, SiS650 and SiS651 powered products.

The executives state that although VIA was not able to provide the right core-logic solution for ASROCK (the brand-name of Hua Ching), they succeeded in selling loads of local area network controllers. The industry insiders said that VIA supplies the new mainboard vendor with its VT6103 chip that is priced at $1.40-$1.50 (information from DigiTimes, Taiwan) per unit. Even Realtek Semiconductor can only provide its LAN processor for about $1.80, maybe $1.60 or $1.70 for their closest partners. Provided that in future VIA is as aggressive as these days, they will land even more orders. At present, VIA’s clients for the chip include Abit Computer, Tyan Computer and Chaintech Computer.