Introducing VIA Embedded's MagicView

VIA and S3 graphics have had a long collaboration in designing embedded graphics solutions. Their latest partnership, however, has seen the development of an Android based development software solution for digital signage. MagicView is an ...

“advanced digital signage solution developed by VIA Technologies in collaboration with S3 Graphics comprised of a VIA embedded system and content management software called MagicView. In comparison with other digital signage solutions on the current market which require high-performance CPU capability which lead to high costs to build up systems, VIA Magic Box supports hardware decoding acceleration technology and enhanced HD video playback of the most demanding HD video formats, including, WMV9, VC1 and H.264 at screen resolutions of up to 1080p.”

The Canadian company Capital Networks is the first company announced as a development partner using VIA's ALTA DS system and MagicView. [Source]

VIA offering an ARM digital signage system

The ALTA DS System offers developers of digital signage systems a small, robust and easily programmable kit. The hardware features include:

• ARM Cortex-A9 System on Chip
• hardware acceleration for video
• HDMI and VGA (optional) ports
• 4 USBs
• one Ethernet
• 4GB eMMC flash memory onboard (expandable to 16GB)
• 1GB DDR3 SD RAM

This is a simple but effective solution for digital signage projects and the less complicated the hardware, the less can go wrong with it. [Source]

The Mini-ITX cluster proves forever popular

Over on Mini-ITX.com, the right border of the popular site shows the most viewed content that day. Fourth on the list is a blast from the past, from February 2004, the build of the 12 node mini-cluster, powered by the VIA EPIA V8000.

The write-up of the project is no Dan Brown novel, so it must be the content that has people visiting so much some nine years later. Or maybe it's just that it looks so darn cool!

"I built a Mini-ITX based massively parallel cluster named PROTEUS. I have 12 nodes using VIA EPIA V8000, 800 MHz motherboards. The little machine is running FreeBSD 4.8, and MPICH 1.2.5.2. Troubles installing and configuring Free BSD and MPICH were few. In fact, there were no major issues with either FreeBSD or MPICH. The construction is simple and inexpensive. The motherboards were stacked using threaded aluminum standoffs and then mounted on aluminum plates. Two stacks of three motherboards were assembled into each rack. Diagonal stiffeners were fabricated from aluminum angle stock to reduce flexing of the rack assembly."