Slashdot Mirror
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. "
Although these things were cool three years ago, many things have changed since then.
If you absolutely need every cubic cm of space, they might be worth a look. Otherwise, forget it.
They are quite expensive, they have no drivers or some lousy drivers and their speed sucks.
If you can, use flexATX board with some Duron or Athlon or Pentium M or something similar and downlock it to get lower power drain.
It will have comparable price but still be much faster than mini-ITX.
VIA is charging the hell out of their customers.
If I could get some small board with a decent MIPS core and graphics and run conventional Linux (with modern and bug free drivers), I would forget about EPIA in a nanosecond.