VIA has announced a new integrated form factor and you guessed it, it's smaller than the last. Mini-ITX was the first VIA embedded platform, launched in 2001. Then came Nano-ITX, perhaps the least sucessful. This was then followed by Pico-ITX which has enjoyed a lot of success in the embedded market. The new Mobile-ITX is half the size of Pico-ITX.Mobile-ITX first surfaced during the Computex trade show in June 2007. Back then it was not the 6 x 6cm square that was launched yesterday. It was literally about the same size as a business card. It was also being pitched as a future platform for ultra-mobile devices where as now the Mobile-ITX, despite still having "Mobile" in its name, is being pitched for embedded applications, espcially medical and military applications.
The Mobile-ITX design as it stands now is actually quite different from the original. It has two parts instead of one, but it offers more features.
"Mobile-ITX employs a modularized design that includes a CPU module card and an I/O carrier board. This offers greater flexibility for developers who can simply drop in the CPU module to a custom designed, application specific carrier board, negating lengthy developmental design and testing phases.
CPU modules based on the Mobile-ITX form factor integrate core CPU, chipset and memory functionality and I/O that includes the CRT, DVP and TTL display support, HD Audio, IDE, USB 2.0, as well as PCI Express, SMBus, GPIO, LPC, SDIO and PS2 signals, through customizable baseboards. In keeping with VIA’s signature low power philosophy, Mobile-ITX-based modules consume as little as 5 watts, ideal for always-on, mission critical systems.
This comprehensive range of advanced technologies can be implemented on a variety of Mobile-ITX compatible carrier board designs that can be adapted to suit almost any environment, or application specific criteria. The CPU module I/O signals are mapped to two unique high density, low profile connectors on the under side of the module, with a distance between the CPU module and the baseboard of only 3mm, making it ideal for ultra-slim system designs. The connectors can also withstand vibrations of up to 5Gs making Mobile-ITX systems suitable for in-vehicle and industrial machining applications."
Other platforms that VIA has launched in the past held some allure for most tech-heads who could imagine using the small boards in cool designs. The Mobile-ITX is more complex to use than simply being a small integrated motherboard. This product will excite embedded developers, however, who now suddenly have the features they are accustomed to working with, but using half the real estate they've had to deal with in the past.
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