In computer design, Pico-ITX is a PC

motherboard form factor In computing, the motherboard form factor is the specification of a motherboard – the dimensions, power supply type, location of mounting holes, number of ports on the back panel, etc. Specifically, in the IBM PC compatible industry, standard ...

announced by

VIA Technologies VIA Technologies Inc. (), is a Taiwanese manufacturer of integrated circuits, mainly motherboard chipsets, CPUs, and memory. It was the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. As a fabless semiconductor company, VIA ...

in January 2007 and demonstrated later the same year at

CeBIT CeBIT was the largest and most internationally representative computer expo. The trade fair was held each year on the Hanover fairground, the world's largest fairground, in Hanover, Germany. In its day, it was considered a barometer of cu ...

. The formfactor was transferred over to SFF-SIG in 2008. The Pico-ITX form factor specifications call for the board to be , which is half the area of

Nano-ITX Nano-ITX is a computer motherboard form factor first proposed by VIA Technologies at CeBIT in March 2003, and implemented in late 2005. Nano-ITX boards measure , and are fully integrated, very low power consumption motherboards with many uses, but ...

EPIA PX

PX10000G

The first motherboard produced in this form factor is called EPIA PX10000G. It is and 10 layers deep. The

operating temperature An operating temperature is the allowable temperature range of the local ambient environment at which an electrical or mechanical device operates. The device will operate effectively within a specified temperature range which varies based on the de ...

range is from 0

°C The degree Celsius is the unit of temperature on the Celsius scale (originally known as the centigrade scale outside Sweden), one of two temperature scales used in the International System of Units (SI), the other being the Kelvin scale. The d ...

to about 50°C. The operating humidity level (relative and non-condensing) can be from 0% to about 95%. It uses a 1 GHz VIA C7-M processor, a VIA VX700 chip set, and is

RoHS The Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive 2002/95/EC (RoHS 1), short for Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment, was adopted in February 2003 by the European Unio ...

compliant. It has onboard VGA video, VIA VT6106S 10/100

8P8C A modular connector is a type of electrical connector for cords and cables of electronic devices and appliances, such as in computer networking, telecommunication equipment, and audio headsets. Modular connectors were originally developed for ...

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...

UDMA Udma is a census town in Kasaragod district in the Indian state of Kerala. Demographics As of 2011 India census, Udma census town had population of 8,115 which constitutes 3,593 males and 4,522 females. Udma census town spreads over an a ...

33/66/100/133 44-pin ATA (1x), and

SATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host adapter, host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) ...

(1x) I/O. DVI and LVDS video-out,

USB 2.0 Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

, COM, PS/2 Mouse & Keyboard, and HD 5.1 channel audio (supplied by a VIA VT1708A chip) are supported through the usage of I/O

pin header A pin header (or simply header) is a form of electrical connector. A male pin header consists of one or more rows of metal pins molded into a plastic base, often apart, though available in many spacings. Male pin headers are cost-effective du ...

s and add-on modules/ daughter cards.VIA EPIA PX Series Homepage
/ref> It has been demonstrated running

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

and

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

. older versions of major

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

distributions, including

Fedora Core Fedora Linux is a Linux distribution developed by the Fedora Project. Fedora contains software distributed under various free and open-source licenses and aims to be on the leading edge of open-source technologies. Fedora is the upstream source ...

6 and

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', '' Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All th ...

7.10, will also run on it. It is available as a single board, as well as part of a barebones package, the Artigo, a small form factor complete computer.

PX5000

This model is similar to the PX10000G, but uses the 500 MHz

VIA Eden VIA Eden is a name of a variant of VIA's C3/ C7 x86 processors, designed to be used in embedded devices. They have smaller package sizes, lower power consumption, and somewhat lower computing performance than their C equivalents, due to reduced c ...

ULV CPU. There are two versions of this model, the PX5000G, which has a fan-assisted heatsink, and the PX5000EG, which has a fanless heatsink.

Add-on modules

''(Note: Either the VIA PX-O add-on module or 4 USB 2.0 I/O are supplied in retail packages.)'' The VIA PX-O daughtercard supplies access to: * 1

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westin ...

-out for

S/PDIF S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) is a type of digital audio interface used in consumer audio equipment to output audio over relatively short distances. The signal is transmitted over either a coaxial cable (using RCA or BNC connectors ...

usage * 4 USB 2.0 ports * 1 3.5mm Mic-in, 1 3.5mm line-out, 1 3.5mm line-in * 1 buzzer/speaker * 1 CN9 connector (function TBC) * 1 CN10 connector (function TBC). The VIA VT1625M daughtercard supplies access to: * 1 external TV-out * 1 video capture port. The Serener PXFPIO (also labeled under VIA PX-DIO) is 109mm × 22mm in size and connects via a 120mm ribbon cable through a daughter card. This addon may require modification to the heatsink due to the size of the daughter card. It supplies access to: * power & reset switches * 3.5mm audio in/out * S/PDIF-in * power & HDD activity LEDs * 4 USB 2.0 ports The VIA PX-TC daughter card, compatible with the PX10000G only, is designed to enhance the multimedia capture and output. It supplies access to: * 1 S-Video port * 1 video-in port * 1

YPbPr YPbPr or Y'PbPr, also written as , is a color space used in video electronics, in particular in reference to component video cables. YPBPR is gamma corrected YCBCR color space (it is not analog YUV that was used for analog TV, though componen ...

port * 1 S/PDIF-out

EPIA-P700

The second motherboard series in this form factor, the P700 series improves upon the PX10000G series by offering

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use i ...

(Using the VIA VT6122 chipset) or a 10/100 Ethernet adapter (VIA VT6107) as a manufacturing option, integrating the power adapter (allowing for direct +12V DC-In & enabling it to directly power SATA), and making the Ethernet & VGA ports optional via the P700-A daughter card. Expanded functionality is offered via the following pin I/O: * 1 LAN * 1 VGA/DVI * 1 COM Port * 1 Audio pin connector for Line-out, Line-in, MIC-in * 1 Front panel * 4 USB 2.0 * 1 PS2 mouse/keyboard * 1 LVDS * 1 LPC/SM Bus/GPIO (Unusable due to VIA not releasing a GPIO driver) The EPIA-P700-10L has a 1 GHz VIA C7 CPU. The EPIA-P700-05LE has a 500 MHz VIA Eden ULV CPU and has a passive heatsink.

Add-on modules

The P700 comes retail with the P700-A & P700-B daughter cards. The P700-A supplies: * Gigabit Ethernet * 1 VGA port * 1 COM port * DVI port via I/O cable The P700-B supplies: * 4 USB 2.0 ports * 1 Buzzer * 1 Line-out, 1 Line-in, 1 MIC-in (3.5 mm)

Intel-based products

Even though the form factor was introduced by

, there are also boards available based on

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

processors A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

. Some have the

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

and the

chipset In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components in one or more integrated circuits known as a "Data Flow Management System" that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. It is usually found on t ...

directly on the Pico-ITX board.

ARM-based products

Pico-ITX boards are also available with

ARM architecture ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configure ...

. In this field DH electronics uses the standardized DHCOM Computer On Modules with several ARM based modules.

Pico-ITXe

The Pico-ITXe specification adds onto the Pico-ITX form factor by taking the EPIA-P700 and upgrading the chipset to a VX800, doubling the maximum RAM to 2 GB, allowing for 667/533 SO-DIMM RAM, upgrading the GPU to VIA's Chrome9 HC3, and adding support for

SUMIT Stackable Unified Module Interconnect Technology (SUMIT) is a connector between expansion buses independent of motherboard form factor. Boards featuring SUMIT connectors are usually used in "stacks" where one board sits on top of another. It was pub ...

. Another notable addition is the expansion from 10 to 12 layers thickness.

References

External links

Pico-ITX Initiative Website

VIA EPIA PX Motherboard Series Home Page

"EPIA PX-Series Pico-ITX Mainboard Operating Guide" (Version 1.1, 1.12MB PDF)

EPIA-PX User’s Manual (Version 1.11, 478KB PDF)

"World's first pico-itx review", the VIA PX10000G (mini-itx.com)

Level Eleven Pico-ITX case mod
{{Computer form factors

Motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...

Motherboard form factors

EPIA PX

PX10000G

PX5000

Add-on modules

EPIA-P700

Add-on modules

Intel-based products

ARM-based products

Pico-ITXe

See also

References

External links