VIA Brings Pico-ITX Mainboard to Market

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, May 22, 2007, 01:00 PM EDT

VIA Brings Pico-ITX Mainboard to Market with the VIA EPIA PX

World's smallest full-featured x86 mainboard now available, along with specialized I/O add-in card to aid system developers

Taipei, Taiwan, 22 May 2007 - VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, today announced the VIA EPIA PX mainboard, the first commercial mainboard based on VIA's recently unveiled Pico-ITX form factor measuring just 10cm x 7.2cm.

Powered by the 1GHz VIA C7 processor and supporting up to 1GB of DDR2 533 SO-DIMM system memory, the tiny 10-layer VIA EPIA PX mainboard is based around the single-chip VIA VX700 system media processor, which features the VIA UniChrome Pro II IGP 3D/2D graphics core, MPEG-2/-4 and WMV9 hardware decoding acceleration and display flexibility, including support for higher display resolutions of up to HDTV for HD DVD playback.

Onboard connectors and I/O enable developers to harness the full power of the mainboard, though the VIA PX-O, a dedicated daughterboard with multiple digital media I/O ports, is available on request to assist project developers in early system testing.

Power efficiency is integral to the platform, with the maximum power (TDP) of the processor and chipset at 9W and 3.5W respectively combined with low power DDR2 memory enabling the VIA EPIA PX to run standard productivity and multimedia applications at under 13W...

Tags: VIA, Market, mainboard, Pico-ITX, itx, Pico, board, Pi, Brin, ICO, AI, AR, K

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com