VIA Technologies announced the VIA EPIA SN-series motherboard, a Mini-ITX board based on the VIA CN896 IGP chipset, that is suited for the industrial PC (IPC) market.
Powered by the 1.8GHz VIA C7 processor, the VIA EPIA SN provides a performance boost up to 30% over previous VIA EPIA motherboards, according to VIA. The VIA EPIA SN is also the first to provide the added flexibility of a 16-lane PCI Express port for bandwidth-intensive graphics cards, stated the company. The motherboard also is equipped with four SATA 2 ports, an Ultra DMA port, a compact flash connector, dual-LAN ports and wireless support. The VIA EPIA SN can support 4GB of DDR2 667 system memory.
The VIA CN896 chipset features VIA Chrome9 HC integrated graphics core, designed for high performance in 2D, 3D and DirectX 9 applications, noted VIA.
Digital signage and POS developers can take advantage of expansion cards supporting DVI and LVDS displays, while the option of an additional four COM ports and a native LPC bus is important to POS vendors, noted the company. Multiple native RAID configurations through 4 SATA channels and VIA V-RAID within the VIA VT8251 southbridge, and the inclusion of a Gigabit Ethernet port as standard make the EPIA SN series a strong contender in NAS system development, according to VIA.
| VIA EPIA SN series mini-ITX motherboard specifications | |
| Item | Detail |
| Processor | VIA C7 1.5GHz nanoBGA2 processor |
| Chipset | VIA CN896 northbridge |
| System memory | Two DDR2 400/533/667 DIMM sockets up to 4GB |
| VGA | Integrated VIA Chrome9 HC integrated graphics |
| Expansion slots | One 16-Lane PCI-E slot and one 32-bit miniPCI slot |
| Onboard IDE | One UltraDMA 133/100/66 connector |
| Onboard LAN | One VIA VT6103L 10/100Mbps Ethernet PHY and one VIA VT6130 PCI-E gigabit Ethernet controller |
| Onboard audio | VIA VT1708A high defination audio codec |
| Onboard TPM | Infineon SLB9635TT 1.2 (Trusted Platform Module) |
| Form factor | Mini-ITX (6 layers) with size 17×17cm |
Source: Company, compiled by Digitimes, September 2007
VIA EPIA SN series mini-ITX motherboard
Photo: Company