VIA Technologies Offers Open Source Laptop Design

The hardware design for a low-cost laptop featuring WiMax support was released under the open source Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. The hardware design is targeted at the growing market of ultra-portable notebooks.

If a company decides to use the hardware design provided by VIA, it will have to distribute the design and changes under the same license as VIA did. Here is what Richard Brown, Vice President of Corporate Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. said about the OpenBook: "The VIA OpenBook builds on the great success of the VIA NanoBook reference design launched last year, which has been widely adopted by numerous customers around the world. Our unique open approach to case design customization and wireless connectivity flexibility, coupled with the higher levels of performance, further extends VIA's leadership in the global mini-note market."

The VIA OpenBook reference is a mini-notebook that weighs only one kilo, and supports resolutions up to 1024x600 and high performance VIA Chrome 9 DirectX 9.0 3D graphics. It uses the VIA 1.6 GHz C7-M ULV processor and VX800 chipset and comes with a 8.9-inch screen. It also features video acceleration for MPEG-2 and 4, WMV9, VC1 and DiVX video formats and a VMR capable HD video processor. It has WiFi, Bluetooth through one of its internal modules and through the second one WiMAX, HSDPA or EV-DO/W-CDMA.

"VIA is a forward thinking company that has realized that sharing enables a healthy ecosystem which helps them provide an innovative product which supports their core business. Making the actual raw CAD files available under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license is a brilliant first step that clearly and legally allows others to emergently build upon VIA's open innovation," said Jon Phillips, Business and Community Manager for Creative Commons.