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VIA launches new Mini-ITX board for IPC market

Press release, September 18; Joseph Tsai, DIGITIMES Asia

VIA Technologies announced the VIA EPIA SN-series motherboard, a Mini-ITX board based on the VIA CN896 IGP chipset, that is suited for the industrial PC (IPC) market.

Powered by the 1.8GHz VIA C7 processor, the VIA EPIA SN provides a performance boost up to 30% over previous VIA EPIA motherboards, according to VIA. The VIA EPIA SN is also the first to provide the added flexibility of a 16-lane PCI Express port for bandwidth-intensive graphics cards, stated the company. The motherboard also is equipped with four SATA 2 ports, an Ultra DMA port, a compact flash connector, dual-LAN ports and wireless support. The VIA EPIA SN can support 4GB of DDR2 667 system memory.

The VIA CN896 chipset features VIA Chrome9 HC integrated graphics core, designed for high performance in 2D, 3D and DirectX 9 applications, noted VIA.

Digital signage and POS developers can take advantage of expansion cards supporting DVI and LVDS displays, while the option of an additional four COM ports and a native LPC bus is important to POS vendors, noted the company. Multiple native RAID configurations through 4 SATA channels and VIA V-RAID within the VIA VT8251 southbridge, and the inclusion of a Gigabit Ethernet port as standard make the EPIA SN series a strong contender in NAS system development, according to VIA.

VIA EPIA SN series mini-ITX motherboard specifications

Item

Detail

Processor

VIA C7 1.5GHz nanoBGA2 processor

Chipset

VIA CN896 northbridge
VIA VT8251 southbridge

System memory

Two DDR2 400/533/667 DIMM sockets up to 4GB

VGA

Integrated VIA Chrome9 HC integrated graphics

Expansion slots

One 16-Lane PCI-E slot and one 32-bit miniPCI slot

Onboard IDE

One UltraDMA 133/100/66 connector

Onboard LAN

One VIA VT6103L 10/100Mbps Ethernet PHY and one VIA VT6130 PCI-E gigabit Ethernet controller

Onboard audio

VIA VT1708A high defination audio codec

Onboard TPM

Infineon SLB9635TT 1.2 (Trusted Platform Module)

Form factor

Mini-ITX (6 layers) with size 17×17cm

Source: Company, compiled by Digitimes, September 2007

VIA EPIA SN series mini-ITX motherboard

VIA EPIA SN series mini-ITX motherboard
Photo: Company