Moore's Law for Motherboards 170
An anonymous reader writes "VIA CEO Wenchi Chen revealed a business card-sized motherboard billed as the 'world's first industry-standard form-factor for PC/phone convergence,' at Computex this week. The mobile-ITX" board measures 3 x 1.8 inches. It's half the size of pico-ITX, which was half the size of nano-ITX, which, in turn, was half-the size of mini-ITX — which was already small. It's not clear whether VIA will make these tiny motherboards available to end users, or if they will only be sold directly to device makers, but generally all of VIA's tiny motherboard formats have spread around to other suppliers and become widely available."
I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
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Up until now I would have liked to add a comment filter that hides any message with the word Beowulf in it, but then I would have missed this one and I would have been poorer for it.
Is that a motherboard in your pocket... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is that a motherboard in your pocket... (Score:5, Funny)
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There fixed it for you! With the right help, you might be able to make it 1000 times bigger...
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My favorite caption in a long time (Score:5, Funny)
Yawn!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Wakeup... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Unfortunately, it prints everything backwards.
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Then again, if flash or similar small stuff ends up replacing standard sized optical media, that'll be a waste of time and effort...
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How big? (Score:5, Informative)
Please put all smart-ass/pro-SAE comments about the metric system below this post, thanks.
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The international standard size is the same as a credit card, which is 85.6 mm x 53.98 mm. It's defined by ISO 7810, ID-1. Oddly enough, the US uses that sizing standard for its credit cards & drivers licenses, but not for business cards.
The business cards my Italian relatives have given me from Italy are always in a slightly different format than international size, they're instead
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Re:How big? (Score:5, Funny)
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Cool (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are you feeling well? Maybe you should get some rest, have a doctor take a look at that bump on your head.
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I want some... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or digital picture frames...
Case-modding an Altoids tin...
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or use the voices in our heads...
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Well, you don't need a board that small to do that. They make "The BIG Tin(TM)" at 4" by 7.5" (holds 10 Oz. (283g) of mints). UPC 0-59280-20202-4.
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Curiously enough....
( Sorry, I couldn't resist :-} )
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A pocket XBox perhaps?
a pocket for the XBox and a wheelbarrow for the controller?
Welcome to the technological world (Score:2)
The same technology that allows us to fit hundreds of millions of transistors on a chip allows us to build a tiny botherboard the functionality in a few custom asics and processors. And so it goes.
The only reason this is "impressive" is because Via is the first company to show it off as if it were sexy. The industry has already been producing small, PCI bus motherboards [pc104plus.com] for years.
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Thankfully, we're already tossing out electrical connections for low-speed I/O with the introduction of Bluetooth, ad there's the portential for making high-speed I/O wireless with beefy 802.11n and later revisions.
The big problem is power. Power is going to kill innovation in the wireless devices field unless we can come up with some impressive storage capacity improvements. You can improve the efficiency of the transmi
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right: 133 mhz maximum processor speed and no mention of price (which i'm guessing means its very expensive) and maximum 256 megs of ram. I can't find a price but i suspect it is not cheap.
what via did was release smallish (though not tiny at least in the intial generation) boards that could run current versi
while it's cool (Score:2)
Get a processor in the MIPS rating of say a 500MHz AMD K8 processor on a credit card device, with self-contained power, decent memory [say at least 128M], etc. Then we'll chat.
Until then my Gumstix 400MHz ARM with 64M of ram will do fine for small time computing [albeit slowly...]
Tom
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Where is the power supply? Where is the storage? What is the processor? How much memory ... etc... Small computing already exists. What we need is less shitty small computing.
Get a processor in the MIPS rating of say a 500MHz AMD K8 processor on a credit card device, with self-contained power, decent memory [say at least 128M], etc. Then we'll chat.
Until then my Gumstix 400MHz ARM with 64M of ram will do fine for small time computing [albeit slowly...]
Tom
From TFA:
The mobile-ITX board that Chen demonstrated this morning appears to be based on a 1GHz "C7-S" processor -- apparently a standard Via C7-M shoe-horned into a 9 x 11mm package. The chip had not previously been announced. The mobile-ITX board also apparently uses an "S" (small) version of the CX700 integrated north-/south-bridge chipset. And, it appears to have an on-board DC-DC converter. Additionally, according to Via, the board includes a CDMA baseband processor chip, suggesting that the mobile-ITX board could be used as the basis for x86-compatible smartphones.
According to a brief item at EpiaCenter, Via's mobile-ITX board will be available with 256MB or 512MB of RAM soldered on-board, and will run Linux or Windows XP Embedded. Even an embedded version of Windows Vista may be too much for the little board, however, a Via spokesperson admits.
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I mean my computer is no bigger than an a couple inches square. That is if you disregard the mobo, memory, PSU, case, disk drives, etc...
Tom
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In you first post, you mentioned a 500 Mhz k8 to be ok, and 128Mbyte ram to be fine.
After the GP showed that its a 1 Ghz VIA (they are about compareable to an half speed k8), and 4 times as much ram as you demanded, you suddenly paddal back just to be able to futher nag around.
And btw, ALL performance is ALU. Where else should it come from. No need to use big words (or acronyms) in show how intelligent you are. You are not going to fool anybody anyway.
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Clockrate != performance or did Intel's P4 escapades not teach you anything?
Tom
arrogant? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) The C7 core runs a full speed in-order ALU and FPU. Unlike the C3, where design constraints required a half-speed FPU, this one has it at full speed. The ALU has a full 24 cycles to complete simply 32 bit operations (should only require 4 cycles, at best). Let's not even mention the 64KB 4-way associative L1 cache with only 3 cycle latency. Even at 1Ghz, this would indicate to me that the clock speed is not, in fact, ALU bound, but more likely FPU or
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seemed to think i read that you claimed the clockspeed was limited because of their ALU and then... meh
still, #2 is worth pointing out. The performance of the chips has stepped up since the core was originally dubbed "C3".
that's all.
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Floating point does not matter for low-power tasks.
What I would like to use these things for is as a small gateway server that can be powered 24/7, and that does routing, fetching of e-mail, POP3 (or something similar) and proxying.
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Uhm... perhaps it would come from the cache? Or the FPU? Or from the memory controller? Or from the bus speed?
The ALU is the "Arithmetic Logic Unit" which performs some of the basic integer mathematics and some parts of memory addressing and simple comparisons, but very little else.
There is plenty that goes on, such as branch pr
Re:while it's cool (Score:5, Insightful)
What the processor doesn't suck is power. Low power consumption FTW!
It must have some, but they haven't figured out how much. But you're right, if it doesn't have a slot, it's pointless.
Has a DC-DC power supply, so luckily, all it needs is the battery. Batteries are getting pretty small these days.
This IS the mobo, memory, and psu. It probably has onboard flash, and if it doesn't already, it will almost certainly have some type of SD slot.
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I believe this device has USB. I would recommend the KingMax SuperStick 4GB [kingmaxdii.com]. It's 4 gigs, and it's smaller than a single stick of Dentyne. I have a couple and my VIA systems boot from that just fine. It may require some rework, of course, but you would expect to customize something like this.
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MicroSD: 8GB (Score:2)
Soon eight. No kidding. [i4u.com]
Wow. Ain't progress fabulous?
Darn, that's for mid-2008 production according to engadget [engadget.com].
Verizon and Samsung jointly announced a 4GB MicroSDHC for May 1 2007 release, but I can't find it.
Anyway, performance on these systems will be more than sufficient for regular office w
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handheld language translator (Score:3, Interesting)
Suppose you are in some place where you can't read the language (it does happen in the age of 500-seat 6000km airliners). You get a newspaper, wave the scanner over the text, and within about three seconds, the scanned writi
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Great, so now I can have it read, "I really like urinalysis" in Japanese.
still impossible for supercomputers (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that both language translation and voice-to-text need a full understanding of the context. Any spoken language has so many different interpretations that it's useless to try automatic processing without full artificial intelligence. A classic example used in AI courses is "he saw that gasoline can explode". This sentence means either "he realized
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People who say we need an AI supercomputer to handle basic language translation needs have probably never been in a situation where they have been completely isolated from everyone b
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An iPhone:
Handheld, large cell phone size
Out facing camera
Inside LCD screen
Take a picture of a newspaper, OCR it, submit it to Google translations or some other website, and within three seconds (assuming a network connection) you get an English translation.
Has a built in microphone; speak into it, and assuming wifi or cell, you can have a 'live' translator reply via chat in English text.
Cost? $499.
You won't see what you are proposing (which requires easily 10x more p
Add Wifi core (Score:2)
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Revolution in custom cellphones? (Score:2)
Think about it - completely customisable UI, thousands of possible plastic cases (I imagine many 3rd party case manufacturers will spring up), second-to-none music and video support, and the ability to use or port millions of existing linux apps.
Maybe in a couple of years time you'll be able to buy a bunch of cellphone parts at radio shack, and assemble them into a custom phone as is cu
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i think you can make your own computer into a cellphone if you get a certain type of adapter, like the ones this comany [falcom.de] sells. i think you just need to get a SIM card and plug it in. and you'll need to find/write some software, i'm sure.
and gumstix [gumstix.com] makes a variety of very small linux computers.
now you'll need some type of interface thing. not sure about the hardware, but you could find something that works with qtopia [trolltech.com]
granted, $10 says the end-result doesnt f
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Somehow I don't see a losing formula on the desktop suddenly becoming viable when you change form factors.
The iPhone and it's ilk are still going to rule the roost, I think.
Been around for a while... (Score:5, Interesting)
The embedded world has had complete computers on "motherboards" this small for quite some time. Check out gumstix [gumstix.com] sometime.
The fundamental problem with PC based motherboards has always been heat dissipation and interface connectors. Heck, the back panel of my desktop uses more area for the connectors than exists on this board. There are processor heatsinks bigger than this thing!
PC's have always been about cheap computing power, not low power dissipation or form factor. I remember a time when the power of your desktop was considered commensurate with the size of the box - we had friends putting regular motherboards into server towers so they could "impress" fellow geeks.
Not that I would mind x86 in the embedded world, but it seems to me that this is going nowhere fast. The problem isn't technical - it's business. Most embedded systems run some sort of ARM variant, which would mean that code would have to be ported to x86. Furthermore, there's no way this would make it into a cellphone - primarily because of the fact that it is x86, and the carriers are adamantly opposed to the prospect of the consumer being allowed to run unauthorized code on their cellphones.
Linux already runs on the ARM, and you still aren't seeing a proliferation of ARM-based general purpose computers. While this would be nice for a sub-notebook, the problem is that sub-notebooks, while a personal favorite of mine, typically have not done well in the marketplace. Consider the HP Jornada, which was discontinued after a few short years. And it seems today that that trend is toward larger, not smaller, laptops.
Re:Been around for a while... (Score:5, Informative)
Various companies like Advantech have long sold expensive PC motherboards (sometimes with soldered cpu, sometimes socketed) that are dramatically smaller than the average. Most of the connectors are on headers, and you can use them or not, as you see fit. For example many people will never need serial or parallel connections - while others will never need USB. Their systems (the only ones I ever researched much) come in sizes ranging from PC/104 (which is to say, same size as a PC/104 card) to 5.25" storage device size (approx. footprint.) And some of them will run on automotive voltages, making a picopsu or similar unnecessary. But they are damned expensive! If VIA brings out a truly teensy motherboard it will fulfill a need I am currently experiencing - the need for a full PC that will fit into an ISO DIN slot. I have the entertainment system part in the car already, now I need the navigation/vehicle monitoring system to finish up, and I don't want to spend the $750+ it would take to get decent horsepower from one of the classic SBC-providing companies.
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Of course, true embedded systems aren't general purpose computers with a smaller form-factor, they're special purpose systems targeted to implement a specific function. In these systems, an X86 doesn't integrate enough hardware to be very useful and some X86 feature
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Tom
Don't think embedded, think home media center (Score:2)
The driver for smaller x86 boards is home media PCs and similar applications. For that, people want small, silent, AND powerful enough to handle video codecs.
But even without those, a portion of the general public wants small and quiet PCs. Dell, HP, Ace
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And the fundamental problem of things like gumstix is that they're very good for one specific function, the one for which they were designed, but if you want to do something outside that, you run into a wedding-cake-like pile of add-on cards to get the functionality you wanted. Take gumstix. I might be wrong, but my reading of their USB technical specifications says that this is a device intend
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You're forgetting embedded PowerPC chips, and entire families of 8 bit and 16 bit chips which are still in widespread use throughout the embedded world. You think it takes a 32 bit chip to drive a discman? What about dumb cellphones, I can garuantee that almost none of those would use a 32 bit chip, the almost is because invariably some products end up over-engineered.
The word PC is vastly over-used since it used to mean IBM PC Compatible (x86). This
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it does, sort of.
only one of the major linux distros runs on the arm and even with that its been looking pretty dicy for a while, i'm surprised arm made it into etch. The debian arm port also leaves a lot to be desired. Its floating point performance sucks on most hardware because they compile for a FPU that is not in most arm boxes and use kernel emulation on machines that don't have it. The ABI they are using makes it very hard to switch away from this (some people are doing a
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That might have to do with their being too expensive for most users. Paying more for less is not always popular.
VIA Nanobook looks cool. (Score:2)
Pictures and more info at TR [techreport.com] and specs at VIA [via.com.tw]
Touchscreen?! I'd prefer a WS in there and do away with the "Dock", and then a PCCARD slot for expansion, but anyhow..
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sucky cpus (Score:2)
Selma? (Score:2)
The first order was placed by one Mordecai Sahmbi.
Next iPhone board? (Score:2)
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the homebrew market (Score:5, Interesting)
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http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php?cP ath=96 [sparkfun.com] - The Port-A-Rotary
Appliance computing (Score:2)
I like Xterminals, but I'm a dinosaur and remember the Real Thing: terminals that did X and you could log into the networked machine[s]. Sort of like a VT220 doing graphics. They ran BOOTP (iso DHCP) and TFTP to boot.
Now you'd want boot from flash and DHCP. The minicomp would be a small box like a SohO router with SVGA out (only 2D re
Ultimately... (Score:2)
WATCH YOUR STEP (Score:2, Funny)
powers of 1000, not 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
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zepto- and yocto-.
No, really.
I mean it.
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I think I'd rather get a zeptoboy than a femtoboy.
Re:powers of 1000, not 2 (Score:4, Informative)
zepto = 10^-21
yocto = 10^-24
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix [wikipedia.org]
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Heat dissipation (Score:2)
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Think about it.
It is magic (Score:2)
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