VIA Announces First Embedded ARM Based Pico-ITX Board, VIA VAB-800

[btarunr]

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient computing platforms, today announced the VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX embedded ARM board. Featuring a choice of an 800MHz or a 1GHz Freescale ARM Cortex-A8 processor, the VIA VAB-800 combines a wide operating temperature range with extremely low power consumption to meet the demands of high-end industrial and in-vehicle fanless embedded applications.

Based on the industry standard 10 cm x 7.2 cm Pico-ITX form factor created by VIA, the VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX board combines a rich I/O set with superb multimedia performance, supporting playback of the most demanding video formats in resolutions up to 1080p. Leveraging VIA's hardware design expertise, the VIA VAB-800 delivers the highest I/O integration on the Pico-ITX form factor for an ultra compact yet highly flexible platform for the latest embedded devices.



The extremely ruggedized VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX supports a wide operating temperature range from -20 to 70 degrees Celsius in an ultra low TDP envelope of only 5W and is backed with a minimum seven years longevity support.

Customers can take advantage of VIA's worldwide embedded software development expertise to quickly create customized designs for a fast time to market approach and is available as a hardware starter kit with board support packages (BSPs) for the Android, Ubuntu and Windows Embedded Compact 7 operating systems.

"The VIA VAB-800 extends our industry leading range of Pico-ITX embedded platforms," said Epan Wu, Head of the VIA Embedded Platform Division, VIA Technologies, Inc. "As a leader in hardware and software support, VIA can tailor our new ARM based offerings for customers to create systems through starter kits, customization support or offering complete systems for different applications."

VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX
Based on the ultra compact Pico-ITX form factor, measuring 10 cm x 7.2 cm, the VIA VAB-800 combines the choice of an 800MHz or a 1GHz Freescale ARM Cortex-A8 processor with two independent, fully integrated GPUs for a power efficient platform with a max TDP of a mere 5W. The two integrated GPUs provide support for dual independent displays along with 3D/2D graphics acceleration to deliver full HD playback support for the most demanding video formats in resolutions up to 1080p.

Rear I/O includes one Mini HDMI and one VGA display port, two USB ports and one 10/100 Ethernet port. On-board features include up to 64GB eMMC Flash memory, 1GB DDR3 SDRAM, support for one SATA port, two single channel LVDS display ports, two COM ports, CAN Bus, front pin headers for line-in/out and MIC-in, a further two USB 2.0 ports, an SDIO pin header and eight GPIOs.

For more information about the VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX, please visit this page

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[faramir]

Depending on the price VIA could have a real winner here, especially when/if they transition to MORE PWOERFUL CPU (sucha s Qualcomm APQ8064 with Adreno 320, once it is finally avaliable). SATA is the big plus, stash system on the MMC card and use SATA for mass storage. These babies are going to seriously thwart x86 on desktop when they eventually get decent CPUs. Given that Ouya console is going to cost $99 with quad core Tegra 3, case and controller, VIA should have no problem coming under that mark with their board(s).

Oh and VIA: do get a 1 gbps MAC and some kind WiFi, these are sold for few bucks on a frikkin expansion card that has to undergo PCI sig licensing so the components alone must be cheaper still. Qualcomm APQ8064 shoudl support WiFi as it is (plus BT as another feature, to connect wireless keyboard).