14 DAY TRIAL // VIA Technologies, Inc, a worldwide leading innovator of power-efficient x86 processor platforms, announced yesterday the release of its latest board form factor, the Em-ITX, aimed at embedded systems and able to provide developers with a compact, versatile and highly integrated board.
The new Em-ITX form factor defines a new open industry standard, is around 30 percent more compact than Mini-ITX and is also able to offer 200 percent more I/O real estate. Measuring only 12cm x 17cm, it comes with dual I/O coastlines and delivers exclusive Em-IO expansion bus so as to provide high flexibility and scalability. Developers will benefit from reduced time-to-market times, as well as from the option of using a scalable processor platform that features the latest 64-bit VIA Nano processor.
The new Em-ITX form factor developed by VIA includes dual I/O coastlines, I/O inputs being spotted on both 17cm edges of the board. The two I/O coastlines provide a variety of connectors, including COM (RS-232/422/485), RJ45, DVI, VGA, LVDS, USB 2.0 and DC power signals. The Em-IO expansion bus used with the new form factor is meant to facilitate the integration of stackable, customizable, expansion modules. Most of the known bus signal technologies are included in Em-IO, namely USB 2.0, GPIO, LPC, PCIe, IDE, IEEE 1394, S-ATA, PCI, DVI, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet and Card Bus signals.
“VIA is known globally as a pioneer of small form factor boards that have become industry standards, and Em-ITX is the latest platform to address the evolving needs of embedded developers,” said Daniel Wu, vice president, VIA Embedded, VIA Technologies, Inc. “With its extensive I/O accessibility, this innovative form factor can deliver ultra-slim systems or customized stacked systems for a wide range of embedded applications.”
According to VIA, products built upon the Em-ITX form factor are expected to come to the market as soon as next month.