The VX900 will be capable of H.264 hardware decoding. According to VIA’s own test results, the VX900 chipset can decode the 40MBps Blu-ray stream with a CPU load of less than 20 percent. The chipset will be combined with the VIA Nano U3000 range of processors.

Whilst Blu-ray playback isn’t likely in a cheap netbook, the company appear to be emphasising the growing trend of high-definition video downloaded from the internet. YouTube also supports the H.264 format that should enable good playback.

As you would expect, given the multimedia strengths of the chip, the VX900 will have HDMI output capability built into the chip. The VX900 also integrates support for PCI-E 2.0 as well as DDR3 memory support, allowing it to benefit from the increased bandwidth.

The VIA VX900 chipset uses an 80nm fabrication process, compared to the 65nm Nano processor parts. The company claims that they would move to a 45nm, but to do so would mean more expensive chips, which wouldn’t bode well for low-priced netbooks where margins are already low.

NetbookNews has a video of the new chipset in action that you can see below. It is not expected to land in the market until the second half of the year. Whether we will see many netbooks with this new chipset hit western shores remains unknown for now, although expect further news at Computex in June.

Update: The VIA VX900 is now official.

These x86 processors certainly seem to be feature-rich, with 64-bit support as well as virtualization technology and SSE3 for multimedia processing. The new Nano 3000 processors will be available in clock speeds ranging from 1.0GHz to 2.0GHz, whilst using around 20 percent less power than current Nano processors.

The L3050 and L3100 are clocked at 1.8GHz and 2GHz respectively, but consume 500mW when idling. The U3XXX series are clocked from 1GHz to 1.4GHz and have impressive idle power consumption of just 100mW. Processor samples are already making their way to OEMs and motherboard vendors. Mass production is expected during Q1 2010.