We've been hearing about a dual-core Nano processor for some time now, and VIA has finally gone and built one. Currently in prototype form, VIA has been busy showing off its newest x86 part at this year's Computex show.

The new dual-core part was shown chugging along at 1.6GHz per core. According to C.J. Holthaus, a member of VIA's Centaur processor design team, it was manufactured on a 65nm process and is nearly ready for release.

"It'll be a product in about six months. This is mainly a technology demonstration," Holthaus said.

A 65nm manufacturing process isn't all that impressive at this stage in the processor game, and the final version will be built using something different. Holthaus declined to give specifics, saying only that it would use a "next-generation" technology.

This is good timing on VIA's part. Intel just recently laid out its future Atom processor strategy, which will also consist of dual-core parts and be aimed at the tablet and ultra-thin netbook space.

AMD this week unveiled a newly revamped roadmap outlining a pair of all-new processor architectures, as well as plans for its CPU/GPU integration, ArsTechnica reports.

Let's start with 'Bobcat,' which is the codename for AMD's new mobile architecture. AMD says Bobcat was built from the ground-up and will compete with Intel's Atom and VIA's Nano platforms. According to one of the slides AMD showed, Bobcat is "sub one-watt capable," though expect higher-clocked parts to sip more juice than that. The 32nm part will support SSE 1 through 3, and is slated to ship in 2011.

On the server side, AMD also announced its "Bulldozer" architecture. As ArsTechnica explains it, a single Bulldozer "module" will appear as a single processor core to the OS with simultaneous multithreading (SMT) enabled. It's unclear how many instructions per cycle the front-end can dispatch, other than at least four and probably as high as eight. Bulldozer will also launch in 2011.

Graphics chip maker Nvidia appears to be interested in talent from Transmeta, and that could mean only one thing: they're moving into the x86 market, says AmTech analyst Doug Freedman.

Freedman's theory is at least plausible. During a Q&A session at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, Nvidia acknowledged it would eventually try its hand at the x86 business, saying it was a matter of "when," not "if."

If Nvidia's looking for the right time, now might be it. The chip maker continues to be at odds with Intel over continued licensing disputes, the latest of which has bumped Nvidia out of contention with Nehalem. And because AMD owns ATI, the chip maker finds itself between rock and a hard place.

That's not good, considering over 30 percent of Nvidia's revenue comes from chipsets. Backing out, even if temporary, puts a lot of pressure on the company's graphics business to hold the fort while licensing disputes are worked out.

It's worth noting that Nvidia probably wouldn't go after the high performance sector, where Intel's Core i7 pretty much stands alone. But the market is wide open in the low performance segment. An Atom alternative combined with the chip maker's Ion platform could conceivably shake things up and give Intel's Atom platform some serious competition.

The rich get richer, so the saying goes, and it applies to Intel's x86 CPU business. Already the No.1 CPU maker in the world, Intel's x86 processor market share rose to 80.5 percent in the second quarter of 2009, up from 78.2 percent in the first quarter.

According to market research firm Mercury Research, Intel's recent market share growth is attributable to the chip maker's aggressive desktop CPU price cuts, as well as increased inventory alleviating continued shortages in certain segments.

Meanwhile, competitor AMD saw its shares drop from 20.9 percent in the first quarter to 18.7 percent in the second, a trend the No. 2 chip maker can't be happy about. It was almost a year ago that AMD announced a split into separate design and manufacturing firms.

VIA's market share remained relatively unchanged, claiming just under 1 percent for the second consecutive quarter.