Via shrinks boards even furtherMobile-ITX unveiledBy Ian WilliamsTuesday, 1 December 2009, 17:30VIA TECHNOLOGIES has taken the wraps off its smallest PC board form factor yet, the Mobile-ITX, which is 50 per cent smaller than its predecessor the Pico-ITX.Running with the growing trend toward mobile devices, Via developed the Mobile-ITX open form factor specification for ultra-compact and portable embedded devices.The 6cm x 6cm computer-on-module specification bundles in a core CPU, chipset and memory functionality and I/O that includes the CRT, DVP and TTL display support, HD Audio, IDE and USB 2.0, as well as PCI Express, SMBus, GPIO, LPC, SDIO and PS2 signals, through customisable baseboards.According to Via, Mobile-ITX-based systems consume as little as five Watts and are a modularised design split between a CPU module card and an I/O carrier board."With Mobile-ITX we have again pushed back the barriers that limit just how small an embedded industrial PC can be," said Daniel Wu, vice president of the Embedded Platform Division at Via."Mobile-ITX enables the creation of a new breed of ultra-compact, portable networked devices suitable for a range of applications, particularly in modern medical and military segments."Full details can be found in Via's 'Mobile-ITX Form Factor' (PDF) white paper. The company expects to start shipping the Mobile-ITX modules commercially, early next year. µ