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Via Now Shipping Dual-Processor Mini-ITX Board
An anonymous reader writes "Via is now shipping its first dual-processor mini-ITX board. The DP-310 features two 1GHz processors, gigabit Ethernet, support for SATA drives, and a media-processing graphics chipset. It targets high-density applications -- according to Via, a 42-U rack with 168 processors would draw about 2.5 kilowatts, or about as much power as two hair dryers." This also looks like the basis for a nice car computer. Also on the small-computing front, an anonymous reader submits "General Micro, meanwhile, last week released what it calls the world's fastest mini-ITX board, powered by a Pentium M clocked up to 2.3GHz. "
Sounds like an excellent-performing midrange desktop replacement to me. Only trick would be marketing it to consumers & businesses who've been indoctrinated in the MHz cult. Two CPUs should give excellent responsiveness.
How good are these? I remember reading a lot of lovely things about S3 DeltaChrome series (owned by VIA), but never got to see a videocard sporting that chip.
You'd think that just SATA would be plenty (maybe SAS for leading edge). Why would want to go to small form factor and use parallel ATA drives?
Someone you trust is one of us.
The article says that the northbride is a CN400, but the photos have a CLE266 northbridge on... What's up with that?
--marmite
I do not represent myself.
Can't we let PS/2 ports die already? Four USB 2.0 ports on this thing, and Via still thought we needed PS/2 ports. I'd rather drop the PS/2 ports and get a FireWire port, or another USB 2.0 port. PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports are as much of a dead end as the MCA bus - it's time to let go.
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I had the previous single processor VIA mini ITX boad as a car computer running media engine in my company car. (Ford Escape) It was very cool. I pulled the radio and put a 7" Lillput widescreen touchscreen monitor where the radio used to sit.
I ran 2-MTX amps to the door speakers with a 12" Sub in the back. I had a USB hub that ran the Wifi bridge to sync things up when I pulled into the garage. I also had the Audigy USB processor, and USB GPS receiver. I had 13,000 MP3's at my fingertips, music videos (a sort of MTV on demand), GPS navigation, Outlook contacts, solitare, games, etc. All in 5.1 Surround sound rollin down the street.
The board could barely keep up with a DVD, and couldn't run Daemon tools to mount an image and play the movie from the HD(important because laptop DVD-RW would skip a lot).
Two processors would probably solve that problem. However, for some reason my board just stopped working. Need to figure out what happened. Overall a fun time consuming project that works fairly well. Still some integration that needs to happen, but Media Engine is Open source and actively developed. (Dev team are jerks most of the time though)
Something like this could be useful for where I work.
We do railroad track geometry testing, and use a modified pickup truck to carry our equipment. A dual processor system would be better for us than our current setup. It would allow us to use one machine for data collection (especially the interrupt handling) and realtime analysis of the data. Additionally, the smaller form factor would allow us to have a lot more room in the back seat of our truck.
2 1GHz processors would be more than enough for our needs. We only have a 800MHz PIII right now.
Sorry to burst the bubble kiddo, but 2.5 kW in an automobile implies that you are pulling 208 Amps at 12 volts. That is a wee bit taxing on your standard automobile electrical system. Maybe if you wire this up with 2 guage welding cable, and use an extra heavy duty alternator your might make it work. I wouldn't want to try.
Because I really would rather have two underperforming CPUs in my computer instead of one fast one.
I mean, dual proc is really nice for making a desktop system interactive since it drops latency to essentially zero, but you've got to have the speed there for when you need it too. The 1GHz via feels slower than a 1GHz intel CPU.
Something that would be really cool, though probably technically hard to do, is to get a decent processor and run it with a VIA or similar as the second CPU. That way you can cut about $100 off the price of a SMP system while still getting the fast response times from dual CPU. I mean, the acronym calls it SMP right? So AMP must be possible. Right?
The M and MII boards have well documented DMA issues There have been many attempts to contact VIA to discuss these, all have been actively ignored (we are pretty sure they are getting the messages).
What concerns me is that the problem has been fixed in windows, but Via wont even talk to linux people about it. That indicates a certain lack of interest in the linuxworld that bodes badly should problems arise with these new mobos. I would be very circumspect about picking up another mobo from them unless I was sure I wouldn't need support.
Just one jilted dudes opinion.
I do that. For near-line archive, several 1U boxes, each with an M10000 Epia board and four 300GB HD. Another box with a database and a web frontend to manage it, and goes like a charm.
not much processing needs, but lots of storage space with little heat. unfortunately the next drives (400GB) are only at 7200 RPM, no longer 5400RM
-Kz-
AMP has been done, and (possibly) predates SMP.
SMP is an O/S design choice, not a hardware thing. An SMP system is one in which all processors can be given all jobs. Assymetric MP systems are those on which this is not true: for instance Sun's first multiprocessor OS could run user code on all processors, but kernel code (including interrupt handlers) could only run on processor zero.
It's harder to write an SMP kernel than an AMP kernel if you start with a uniprocessor kernel - you don't need to introduce any new locks if you go the AMP route.
As to your proposal, I think dual-core desktops are close enough to make it irrelevant. Sorry.
Phil
I guess today is a passable day to die.