2008-10-28

VIA VB8001 - first board with VIA Nano

I was eagerly waiting for the first product based on new VIA Nano CPU. VIA had promised to deliver it in the third quarter of this year, however, until now you couldn't find anyone. VIA showed the first one at the ESC (Embedded Systems Conference) Boston 2008, 27 October 2008. It's VIA VB8001 with 1.6GHz VIA Nano CPU, VIA CN896 north bridge and VT8237S south bridge. Board has PCIe 16x and mini-PCI expansion slots, hdds and optical storage can be attached to two SATA ports or one EIDE port. There are two DDR2 DIMM sockets where you can insert up to 4GB of memory. The disappointing point for me was a back panel i/o. You can find PS2 ports for mouse and keyboard, 1 serial port, 1 RJ-45 (VIA VT6130 Gb ethernet controller), 2 USB 2.0 ports and three audio phone jacks. It is quite minimal set of expansion ports. It would be much more interesting if back panel was similar to VIA EPIA-M700 board (I want at least DVI and two RJ-45 ports). However, everything else is probably ok. I don't know when they will be available in the market but I may consider to buy this to replace my current VT310-DP. Still I hope more products will come in several months (though I am not very optimistic).
VIA VB8001

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