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Low-power - but this processor is aimed at servers, not mobile

Normally, Via Technology processors are interesting because they are very low power chips, which strangely, aren't used in mobile hardware very much. But a dual-processor mini-ITX board? Who is that for?

The short answer is: "Server technology." Via has discovered that increasingly, people are looking at their big, super-powered Xeon servers - designed for 100% uptime in remote Internet buildings - and realising that it's possible to get more reliability from something which doesn't run so fast or so hot.

The  announcement of the VIA EPIA DP-310 Mini-ITX mainboard at CeBIT in Hannover is focused almost entirely on power - but electric power, not processing power.

"We're finding that mixed in amongst the racks of big iron, people are starting to install our boxes," said Richard Brown. "It occupies less space in a co-location facility, uses less power, and is more reliable. Also, frankly, most of these servers aren't where the bottleneck is; more processing power isn't required."

But sometimes, it is!

A dual processor moves up the processing power ladder, without moving much higher up the electrical power grid.

As the Editor of Mini-ITX.com  summarised: "The power efficiency of the board (up to 7W for each CPU, plus a little extra for the supporting chips) makes low power consumption, high density computing very possible - 168 CPUs in a single 42U Rack at around 2.5kW has been quoted. VIA expect a 60-100% performance gain in most applications, compared to a single CPU machine.