VIA EPIA EN-series Mini ITX motherboard launched

VIA today announced the VIA EPIA EN-Series Mini-ITX mainboards, the first of VIA's ultra compact platforms to feature the VIA C7 processor, making it the most powerful EPIA platform to date.

Designed to inspire a new generation of powerful digital media appliances, the VIA EPIA EN mainboard sets new standards for performance per watt and rich feature set, integrating the advanced VIA CN700 digital media IGP chipset that boasts an impressive range of features, including full hardware HDTV encoding up to 1080i, 720p output, hardware MPEG-2 acceleration, VIA Vinyl Multi-channel Audio, support for up to 1GB of DDR2 400/533MHz memory, full featured SATA II RAID, an LVDS module connector and Gigabit LAN.

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 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 Jerry Yeh, Associate Vice President, VIA Embedded Platform Division, VIA Technologies, Inc. "Easy-to-use small form factors are driving the proliferation and diversity of the x86 platform into new and exciting markets, and our VIA EPIA mainboards continue to be an integral part of this evolution."

Utilizing the state-of-the-art 90nm manufacturing process, the onboard 1.5GHz VIA C7 or fanless 1.2GHz VIA Eden processor boasts 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% in a complete range of applications over equivalent VIA C3 processors. The VIA processors also integrate the world’s most advanced native x86 security through the VIA PadLock Security Engine, offering real-time military-grade protection of data including the world's fastest x86 AES, secure hash and dual quantum based random number generators, as well as anti-worm propagation support.