New Nano-ITX Boards Shown At Cebit

Subartik writes "The new nano-itx boards from Via have been shown at the CeBit show in Germany. It looks like it will be a suitable platform for all kinds of small form factor devices. See VIA embedded and Linux Devices for the specs and pictures" An anonymous reader points to PC World articles about the Nano-ITX board itself as well as the first system which will include it.

Comments

Tons of uses...

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

Here's some ideas:

-Homebrew $200 firewalls (routers, gateways, etc) with much, much greater capabilities than those little D-Link units.
-Personal NAS devices that, again, are mega-cheap and tiny
-home automation devices: c'mon, who hasn't dreamed of fully automating their house?
-motorcycle-based GPS system anyone?
-cheapass public terminal systems: incorporate one of these into an LCD screen?
-smaller tablets, laptops with longer battery life? Sure there's not much computational power, but if you're just doing surfing or doing office chores...
-add a single wifi chip/small antenna and you have instant access point. I bet Starbucks would love this idea. Instant, easy, cheap wireless internet.

Now, personally, I think these things could be great building blocks for doing distributed computing research. You could build a rather large network of these tiny things into a standard ATX tower, and have yourself a portable beowulf cluster, or hell, nice little units to experiment with distributed computing ideas. I can see it now: a couple of 8-drive HDD external bays, with each slot housing full systems!

distributed research platform:

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

Design a custom 4U case, and mount these blade-style in the case, each with a tiny little 2 or 4GB flash drive. I'm willing to bet that a 4U half-depth case could support 12 of these things, with a low-power redundant PSU to power the array. Get a 72U rack, fill it with these things, and you have 216 systems on a single half-depth rack, consuming ~600 watts of power.

Oh god, would I love to build such an array...oh baby...