VIA unveils EPIA mainboard with C7 processor

LEADING core logic chipset manufacturer, VIA Technologies, has unveiled a new product, an EPIA certified mainboard for computers with C7 processor.

EPIA is short for the European Photovoltaic Industry Association, which promotes photovoltaics at the national and international levels assist members in the development of their businesses.
While a mainboard is a computer term used as the same as motherboard and Personal Computer (PC) mainboardFind; a printed circuit board used in a PC.

VIA Technologies whole announcing its latest in shelf, EPIA EN-Series Mini-ITX mainboards, said, the first of VIA’s ultra compact platforms have as feature the VIA C7 processor, making it the most powerful EPIA platform to date.

Associate Vice President, VIA Embedded Platform Division, Mr. Jerry Yeh, said, it was designed to inspire a new generation of powerful digital media appliances.

The VIA EPIA EN mainboard hence sets new standards for performance per watt and rich feature set, integrating the advanced VIA CN700 digital media chipset that boasts an impressive range of features, including full hardware High Definition Television (HDTV) encoding up to 1080i, 720p output, hardware Motion Pictures Expert Group (MPEG-2) acceleration.

VIA Vinyl Multi-channel Audio, he also said, supports up to 1 Giga bit (GB) of DDR2 400/533 Mega Hertz (MHz) memory with a module connector and Gigabit Local Area Network (LAN). DDR2 is the next generation of type of Random Access Memory (RAM) technology that is designed for greater clock frequency and available bandwidth without increasing power consumption.

By packing all these leading-edge features and rich VIA silicon platform onto an ultra compact mainboard, the VIA EPIA EN reduces the need for add-in cards and compatibility testing, slashing time to market and significantly lowering the total cost of development for SIs and Owner Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

Additionally, the superior power efficiency of the processor and the platform enables ultra compact designs with a maximum power consumption of just 21 watts.

“The VIA EPIA EN mainboard presents a tremendous opportunity for our customers to take a powerful yet highly efficient all-in-one platform and create their next generation systems quickly and easily,” said Mr. Yeh.

Emphasising, “Easy-to-use small form factors are driving the proliferation and diversity of the x86 platform into new and exciting markets, and VIA EPIA mainboards continue to be an integral part of this evolution”.

He explained that by utilizing the state-of-the-art 90nm manufacturing process, the onboard 1.5GHz VIA C7 or fanless 1.2GHz VIA Eden processor improves exceptionally low average power consumption of less than 1 watt, and employs the proprietary bandwidth-efficient VIA V4 bus to deliver a solid performance increase of 80 per cent in a complete range of applications over equivalent VIA C3 processors.