VIA Releases "Open Source" UMPC Design

UMPCs or, as Intel calls them, ULCPCs or netbooks, are hot right now. What they are, either way, are ultra-portable notebooks in the Asus Eee PC or HP 2133 Mini-Note PC vein. And many of these notebooks are powered by low-power VIA CPUs.

While VIA has had the ultra-low-power CPU market to itself for a long time, Intel isn't one to ignore a burgeoning market, and its announcement and upcoming release of Atom CPUs is clearly targeted at VIA's product line.

That said, on Tuesday VIA introduced the new VIA OpenBook mini-note reference design targeted at the rapidly growing market, and they released it as "open source."

In an emailed press release, Richard Brown, Vice President of Corporate Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. said:

"The VIA OpenBook builds on the great success of the VIA NanoBook reference design launched last year, which has been widely adopted by numerous customers around the world. Our unique open approach to case design customization and wireless connectivity flexibility, coupled with the higher levels of performance, further extends VIA's leadership in the global mini-note market."

When they say "open approach" they mean it. The external panel CAD files for the VIA OpenBook Reference Design are being released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license and they can be downloaded here.

Jon Phillips, Business and Community Manager for Creative Commons said,

“VIA is a forward thinking company that has realized that sharing enables a healthy ecosystem which helps them provide an innovative product which supports their core business. Making the actual raw CAD files available under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license is a brilliant first step that clearly and legally allows others to emergently build upon VIA's open innovation."

Of course, this is less about open source and more about selling CPUs and motherboards. Hardware-wise, nothing's really new; it's all already released VIA hardware. Full specs follow:

Processor: 1.6GHz VIA C7®-M ULV Processor
FSB: 800MHz
Chipset: VIA VX800 unified chipset

Memory: DDR2 SO-DIMM up to 2GB
HDD: 80GB Hard-Disk or above

LCD Panel: 8.9" WVGA 1024X600 LED screen
Graphics: VIA Chrome9 HC3 DX9 3D engine with shared system memory up to 256MB
Video Decoding: MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC1 and DiVX video decoding acceleration

Audio: Realtek HD Audio codec, 2 speakers

Networking: 10/100/1000 Mb/s Broadcom Giga NIC Ethernet Solution

Wireless: Broadcom 802.11b/g or GCT 802.16e
-2in1 (WiFI+ Blue Tooth) default module
-3in1 (AGPS+WiFI+ Blue Tooth) upgrade module
-WiMAX secondary wireless module option
-EV-DO /W-CDMA secondary wireless module option
-HSPDA secondary wireless module option

I/O: 4 in 1 embedded card reader
1 D-Sub Port
3 x USB (Ver. 2.0 Type A Port)
1 Mic-in audio jack
1 Headphone out

Webcam: 2.01 megapixel dual headed rotary CCD camera

Dimension: 240(W)x175(D)mm
Thickness: 36.2(H)mm ( at battery)
Weight: Under 1kg

Operating System Support: Microsoft® Windows® XP, Windows Vista® and all popular Linux distributions

Status Indicators Power on, battery and HDD LEDs

Battery: 4 Cells, 2600ma

Options: USB interface DVD Dual RW
Leather Cover

Still, who's going to use these designs? Doubtful that a large manufacturer such as HP or Dell would use them. It'll be interesting to see where this goes, if anywhere.