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Two manufacturers,
Computer motherboards are the cards that house primary electronic components such as processor, memory and
The vast majority of motherboards are manufactured by Taiwanese companies such as AsusTek,
Shuttle, a 500-person company based in Taipei, builds small motherboards and uses them in a computer called the XPC, similar in size to
Shuttle shipped 47,000 XPCs in August, said Ron Carlson, senior marketing executive for the company. "This market is ours to lose right now," he said.
Motherboard makers, punished by a declining PC market in recent years, stand to benefit if they can convince buyers to use standard computer technology for new jobs, such as handling video and audio.
Via, also headquartered in Taipei, is looking beyond the PC with its small motherboards. More than a year ago, Via released a motherboard 6.7 inches on a side, a size it called Mini-ITX. And Wednesday, the company said it will begin shipping by the end of the year the even more diminutive Nano-ITX motherboard, just 4.7 inches on a side.
Though one British PC maker,
Asus, too, is using smaller motherboards to move into new territory. Its PQS4 motherboard is used in a new gadget it's showing this week called the DigiMatrix, a small multimedia computer that can handle audio and video information. The DigiMatrix is 11.2 inches wide, 11.4 inches deep, and 2.1 inches tall.
Meanwhile, Intel is focusing on traditional PCs.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company
One of the main reasons for developing the new design is to align the three hottest components of a computer--the processor, chipset and graphics card--so that the cooling airflow can travel directly through the machine. Dealing with these thermal issues is one of the main challenges of compact computers, especially as processors get faster.
