VIA Celebrates 5th Birthday of EPIA Mini-ITX Mainboards!

VIA Celebrates 5th Birthday of EPIA Mini-ITX Mainboards!

Five years ago today, VIA Technologies, Inc. launched the first EPIA mainboards through its VIA Platform Solutions Division (VPSD) based on the Mini-ITX form factor it had invented three months earlier – the smallest, most integrated standard PC platform in the world, with global channel availability announced in April 2002. This launch has proved the catalyst for a “Big Bang” of small form factor innovation among industry players and enthusiasts alike.

Today, the Mini-ITX has been widely adopted for an enormous variety of small footprint systems requiring low power consumption, from thin clients, kiosks, point-of-sales (POS) and network devices to newer x86 fields such as car PCs, digital signage and ID systems. With a broad infrastructure of motherboard and chassis makers and system builders evolved around it, the Mini-ITX has become a leading industry standard embedded mainboard.

VIA EPIA mainboards have lowered the barriers to entry for system developers, revivifying garage innovation as smaller companies use the complete, off-the-shelf platforms to rapidly bring their exciting new ideas to market. The Mini-ITX platform has also inspired many enthusiasts to create exotic and fun computers out of everyday objects, known as ‘case mods’ – the focus of one of the two competitions this month.

“VIA’s success has been in consistently anticipating market trends, and we realized back then that the PC industry was in desperate need of a breakthrough product to spur innovation on the x86 platform. The Mini-ITX mainboard proved to be that breakthrough,” said Richard Brown, VP of Corporate Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. “VIA’s continued innovation to the standards of integration and miniaturization seen today at both the silicon and platform levels is testament to our engineering excellence, our vision of where the market is heading and our commitment to driving new industry standards.”

Read the complete Press Release