In March 2001, the chipset manufacturer
VIA Technologies released a reference design for
an ITX motherboard, to promote the low power C3
processor they had bought from Centaur Technology,
in combination with their chipsets. Designed by
Robert Kuo, VIA's chief R&D expert, the 215
mm x 191 mm VT6009 ITX Reference Board was demonstrated
in "Information PC" and set-top box
form factors. He would later go on to design the
Mini-ITX form factor. The ITX form factor was
never taken up by manufacturers, who instead produced
smaller boards based on the very similar 229 mm
x 191 mm FlexATX form factor.
In October 2001, VIA announced their decision
to create a new motherboard division, to provide
standardized infrastructure for lower-cost PC
form factors and focus on embedded devices.
The result was the November 2001 release of
the VT6010 Mini-ITX reference design, once again
touted as an "Information PC", or
low cost entry level x86 computing platform.
Manufacturers were still reticent, but customer
response was much more receptive, so VIA decided
to manufacture and sell the boards themselves.
In April 2002 the first Mini-ITX motherboards¡XVIA's
EPIA 5000 (fanless 533 MHz Eden processor) and
EPIA 800 (800 MHz C3)¡Xwere sold to industrial
customers.
MINI
ITX FORM FACTOR / DIMENSIONS/ ATOM MINI ITX SYSTEMS
/ MINI ITX EMBEDDED PC MODELS 
