VIA Unveils VAB-600 Pico-ITX Board Powered by WM8950 Processor

VIA Technologies has recently announced the VAB-600 Pico-ITX embedded board featuring WonderMedia WM8950 ARM Cortex A9 SoC clocked at 800MHz. VIA targets in-vehicle infotainment as well as mobile and healthcare applications for the board despite an operating temperature range between 0°C and 60°C.

Here are the key features of this embedded board:

• SoC – Wondermedia WM8950 Cortex-A9 @ 800MHz  + Mali-400 GPU
• System Memory – 1GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Storage – 4GB eMMC Flash memory + 512KB SPI Flash for Boot Loader + microSD slot
• Video Output – Mini HDMI, on-board DVO (Digital Video Output) for TTL or LVDS display
• Video Codecs – MPEG2 MP@HL, MPEG4, H.264 BP/MP/[email protected], VC-1 SP/MP/AP, VP8 and JPEG/MJPEG.
• USB –  2x mini USB 2.0 host ports
• Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet (VT6113), 3G (SIM card slot) and optional WiFi support (VIA VNT9271B6050 WiFi module shared with one USB port)
• On-board Connectors:
  • 2x COM connectors
  • 1x RTC battery pin header
  • 1x USB 2.0 connector
  • 1x SPI connector for programming SPI Flash ROM
  • 1x Keypad connector
  • 1x CIR connector
  • 1x Front audio pin header for Line-in, Line-out and MIC-in
  • 1x Front panel pin header for system power-on, reset and power LED
  • 4-wire resistive touch screen FPC connector (through VT1603A)
  • 1x pin header for 1 I2C pair and 8 GPIO
  • Optional battery charger connector with Smart Battery function
• Operating Temperature Range – 0°C to 60°C
• Operating Humidity – 0% ~ 95% (relative humidity ; non-condensing)
• Dimensions – 10cm x 7.2cm Pico-ITX form factor

The company provides board support packages (BSPs) for Android 4.0 and/or Embedded Linux (Kernel 3.0.8). Android 4.0 EVK is available for download here, but there’s nothing for Linux yet. Before downloading the file you’ll have to agree to a “Non-Disclosure and Recipient Acknowledgment for Short Term Sample Products Evaluation”, which I find a bit silly for a publicly available file…

VIA also offers a startker kit including VIA VAB-600 Pico-ITX board, VAB-600-A I/O card, VAB-600-C TTL Converter card, a 7” touch screen TTL panel, cables and a 18W AC adapter.

Sample units of the VIA VAB-600 Pico-ITX board are available now at an undisclosed price. Further information, including the board user’s manual and product brief, is available on VIA’s VAB-600 page.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

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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