VIA EPIA NR Nano-ITX Mainboard - As Small As They Get

The Taiwanese chipset and motherboard producer and vendor VIA Technologies announced today the release of its latest Nano ITX form factor mainboard aimed at healthcare, retail and industry applications. This motherboard is specifically designed for embedded systems and solutions where low power consumption and a small form factor are paramount. The EPIA NR Nano-ITX features a fanless 1GHz VIA C7 processor combined with a VIA CX700 high integration system media processor.

The VIA EPIA measures only 12cmx12cm and it is the first mainboard in such a small form factor to natively support LVDS for use in two single or one dual monitor configurations, making it ideal for a number of embedded systems that require dual monitor support. Coming with both ATA and Serial ATA connecting ports VIA EPIA offers extensive data storage options for mainstream systems and a Compact Flash connector for local operating system storage in industrial automation. The extensive In/Out set of connectors includes Broadband Ethernet, mini PCI port, USB version 2.0, COM, LPC and Super I/O headers.

According to the VIA Technologies press release "The rich feature set of the VIA EPIA NR is targeted at both traditional and fast-emerging embedded markets, and allows developers to highly customize their system designs." Daniel Wu, Assistant Vice President, VIA Embedded Platform Division, VIA Technologies, said that "by leveraging the board's size, low profile, power efficiency and fanless operation, developers can cost effectively build small x86 systems for a wide spectrum of networked applications and environments." Because of the low power VIA C7 processor integrated in the motherboard and the other power friendly components, this motherboard needs only about 15.5W or slightly less.

Inside the VIA EPIA NR motherboard, near the C7 processor resides 1GB of power efficient DDR2 memory running at a clock frequency of 533MHz. As it uses the highly integrated VIA UniChrome Pro II IGP graphics core, the mainboard needs not need an additional PCI or AGP type connector for a discrete video solution. Additionally, according to the producing company cited by the site Linuxdevices "Via's Padlock Security Engine technology offers military grade encryption and superior data security."