VIA Technologies has announced the VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX board powered by a Freescale i.MX537 (ARM Cortex A8) processor clocked at 800MHz or 1GHz depending on the requirements, with 1GB DDR3-800 SDRAM and support for eMMC Flash with a capacity of up to 64 GB. The VIA VAB-800 is an industrial board that can operate in a wide temperature range and targets high-end industrial and in-vehicle embedded applications.
Here are the specs of the board:
- Processor – Freescale Cortex-A8 single core iMX537 @800MHz
- System Memory – 1GB DDR3-800 SDRAM, using 128M x16 memory devices
- Flash – eMMC Flash, up to 64GB
- Graphics – Supports two independent, integrated graphics processing units: an OpenGL® ES 2.0, 3D graphics accelerator and an OpenVG™ 1.1 2D graphics accelerator
- Ethernet – SMSC LAN8720A 10/100 PHY transceiver with HP Auto-MDIX support
- Audio – Freescale SGTL5000 low power stereo codec with headphone amp
- HDMI – Silicon image SiI9024A HDMI transmitter
- CAN – TI SN65HVD1050 EMC optimized CAN transceiver
- USB – Hub SMSC USB 2.0 high speed 4-port hub controller
- Onboard I/O
- SATA I connector with voltage select jumper
- SATA DOM power supply connector
- 2 x COM connectors with power supply (one supports 8-wire, another supports 4-wire)
- 2 x Single-channel, 18/24-bit LVDS connectors
- CMOS sensor connector for BT.656 camera module
- RTC battery connector
- Front audio pin header for line-in, line-out and MIC-in
- JTAG connector
- 2 x Boot flash select pin headers
- Miscellaneous pin header for 2 USB 2.0 ports, 1 USB device port, 2 CAN bus ports, system power-on and reset
- Miscellaneous pin header for 1 SDIO port, 4-wire resistive touch screen interface, 1 I2C pair and 8 GPIOs
- 5V DC-in power connector
- Back Panel I/O
- VGA port
- 2 x USB 2.0 ports
- Mini HDMI port
- RJ-45 LAN port
- Watch Dog Timer
- Power – 2W typical, 5W max.
- Operating Temperature – 0 ~ 60°C (-20°C ~ 70°C for option)
- Operating Humidity – 0% ~ 95% (relative humidity ; non-condensing)
- Dimension: 10 cm x 7.2 cm (Pico-ITX)
The company provides Android 2.3, Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows Embedded Compact 7 (through third party) BSPs for the board.
VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX board samples are available now. You can find more information on VIA VAB-800 page.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Very interesting! Remarks:
Why Android 2.3 and Ubuntu 10.04? Why not Android 4.0 and Ubuntu 12.04? Just a matter of “not yet finished”, or are the modern versions of these OS-es too demanding? So … what’s the Antutu Benchmark score? 😉
What’s the price? The “industrial board” leaves little hope it will be affordable for consumers, I would say.
@ Sander
My guess is that for industrial products there is a lot of testing and certification required and this takes time, which is why they are one year late.
Yep, each time you read “industrial”, you also implicitly read “very expensive” and “not for individuals”.
And then the never-ending question: what is a good price for such an ARM board?
Newegg sells a “ASRock E35LM1 AMD E-240 APU AMD A50M Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo”, with onboard (VGA)video, onboard audio, onboard LAN for 59.99 USD (ex VAT ex shipping). BTW: I don’t understand how that’s possible.
Anyway: Hopefully it means a consumer ARM board is also possible in that price range. However, looking at the 50 USD ARM sticks, I think it’s hard (or the ARM sticks have a big margin).
> VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX board samples are available now.
It’s pointless to say that w/o mentioning the price. And if the price is not known, it’s not exactly ‘available now’.
@ rm
whoops, I think I misread, somehow missed the word “samples”.
@ Sander
That’s an amazingly low price for a x86 board.
But you still need to add Memory (e.g. $10 for 1GB), some storage, and the power supply.
@ rm
Even if it was at the mass-production stage, I doubt they would disclose the price, because companies never disclose it for industrial boards. However, for consumer products, they will always disclose the price.
In stock http://www.logicsupply.nl/motherboards/small-form-factor/vab-800/
soon a barebone will be released. VIA will expand this platform with products the coming years.