14 DAY TRIAL // Just recently, VIA technologies, a leader in the market for low-power processors and platforms, has announced the introduction of a new product, designed to combine the company's C7-M processors with a relatively new motherboard IGP, the VX855 media system processor. These two products have been combined in the new VIA Surfboard C855, a reference design motherboard that can be used for creating low-power mini notebooks with a screen size between 10 inches and 12 inches. On that note, the chip maker has just released a video to showcase some of the features that the new Surfboard can enable inside a low-power PC.
The video posted on the “Brown Knows” website shows a custom-design computer system that has been built on VIA's latest platform, and which is meant to provide a general idea on how the company's Surfboard can enable computer system vendors to develop small-sized and low-power portable computer systems that can provide users with more than a PC that is suitable for surfing the Internet. Thanks to the built-in media system processors, the Surfboard can seamlessly play back HD video, without putting too much stress on the system processor.
At first glance, the VIA Surfboard appears to provide a performance level that is close to that of NVIDIA's ION platform. As some of you already know, the ION platform combines an Atom processor with a GeForce motherboard GPU to deliver an optimum PC performance in a small form factor PC. According to NVIDIA, its next-generation ION 2 platform will provide support for a number of new processors, including VIA's own Nano CPU. This will provide system builders with a wider range of choices for building netbooks and nettops.
Currently, no PC vendor has announced its intention of building a computer system based on the new platform from VIA, but there are some speculations regarding an upcoming Dell Adamo system, which could come in the form of a high-end netbook.