Compulab's tiny ass PC

It's nothing new these days to have a full-fledged Pocket PC squeezed into seemingly impossible form factors -- HTC's Star Trek comes quickly to mind -- but we're pretty sure Compulab is breaking some new ground with their CM-X270L mini PC. A mere two-thirds the size of a credit card, the 1.7 by 2.6-inch device holds an XScale processor, 512MB of flash memory, 128MB of RAM, a sound card and 802.11b WiFi. The device also manages extra snazz such as a PCI bus and 4 USB host ports, putting this thing beyond the realm of the average PDA. Obviously, those hugemongeous antennas put a little bit of a damper on this thing's portability, but we're guessing this thing needs a few extra components to get moving anyways, so we'll let 'em fly for now. The best news is that the device not only runs Windows CE and Linux, but goes for $47 a piece if you buy 'em 10,000 at a time. We're sure that smartphone and PDA manufacturers will be more than happy to pass the size and cost savings on to us consumers.

[Via The Inquirer]

[Sean @ Jun 29th 2006 6:03PM]

It would be interesting to see a cluster based on these. Just preload the software and supply power to a whole pile of them. You could get 10 of these for the price of a cheap PC for a total of 5ghz of processing power. You don't even have to wire them together with the wifi built in.

[TC @ Jun 29th 2006 6:29PM]

You know, the shape of the cables going to the Wi-Fi aerials looks a bit like a tiny ass. Your title is justified!

[james @ Jun 29th 2006 6:31PM]

I wonder if the nitendo wii could benifit from this

[DT @ Jun 29th 2006 6:40PM]

My ass doesn't need its own PC, thank you very much.

[Blademonkey @ Jun 29th 2006 6:47PM]

I can't find the damn link, but a year ago, there's a was a post on Mini-itx.com about a PC that was crazy small, it had a VGA output and CPU and some ram. looked like a small cube. Anyone have a link to it?

[slip @ Jun 29th 2006 6:48PM]

Damn...get one of those in the Nokia 770 (or its successor), which I think is in need of some USB host ports.

[wisefool @ Jun 29th 2006 6:49PM]

@DT - perhaps if you attached a PC to your ass, it could wipe it for you.

[Ethan @ Jun 29th 2006 7:15PM]

Since when is running Windows CE good news??? Not even to speak of "best news".

[cmonkey @ Jun 29th 2006 7:43PM]

@OP: It's too big for a smartphone, plus any Smartphone or Pocket PC OEM is going to design their own PCB to save a few bucks.

@Sean: Not exactly. I have a Pocket PC with a 624mhz Xscale. The performance is nowhere near a 300mhz x86 cpu, let alone a 600mhz. As for getting 10, your average computing tasks scale horribly to parallel processors. 10 500mhz CPUs do not equal 1 5ghz CPU.

@Blademonkey: I don't know the exact unit you're talking about, but I assume it was a nanoITX board running a VIA CPU and NB. NanoITX is pretty nifty, and at 12cmX12cm with a ~1.2ghz x86 cpu, it has a decent performace/size ratio.

@Ethan: Well... there aren't all that many choices for OSs with GUIs for XScale. Your choices are basically PalmOS, WinCE, or a tiny linux distro like Familiar with Qtopia or GPE as a GUI.

[Peter Elliot @ Jun 29th 2006 8:17PM]

$47 is for the stipped out version - 300MHz, 16MB RAM, very little Flash and no WiFi version.

By the time you've added all the extras it's around $200... and you still need something to mount it on. For embedded control however, it's a very nice system.

For a small Linux SD based computer check out the Technologic Systems TS-7300 (www.embeddedarm.com).

[SuperQ @ Jun 29th 2006 8:35PM]

Gumstix boards are almost 1/2 the size, specs are similar, but not identical.. trades off bluetooth for wifi.. the other nice thing is gumstix will sell you them in quantiy 1, not 1000.. and they have an excelent development kit, and community.

http://gumstix.com

[Pat Horne @ Jun 29th 2006 11:09PM]

Cheesy display tho and battery life stinks.

[DeepKeeper @ Jun 30th 2006 1:41AM]

Not mini PC, but large PPC stuffing )

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Jun 30th 2006 3:56AM]

Read on www.linuxdevices.com - there are smaller PCs.

[ksmith @ Jun 30th 2006 10:53AM]

Blademonkey, is this what you're looking for?

http://www.epicempire.com/computers/space-cube.html

[Craig @ Aug 17th 2006 2:28AM]

this thing is awesome, the x270w has up to 500mhz processor, up to 512mb flash, lcd and touchscreen compatible up to 800x600, can take an external monitor (think tv-out or real monitor) with a 3d acceleration graphics chip! the version with 3d graphics doesn't have wifi, but it has up to 3usb host ports! just sacrifice one for internal wifi and voilà..it has serial and ethernet...and the price is pretty (if not very) low for something mid-range (excluding screen of course)...just imagine the possibilities! we could make a much enhanced gp2x-like PEP! except it would have touch screen, high resolution output, etc etc etc... sooo... who's with me for this project? we'll need around 1000 peeps to make it worthwhile... no seriously that is bound to be possible... if anyone is interested, e-mail me at: me craigwatson(dot)org =)

[Craig @ Aug 17th 2006 2:32AM]

oops... that was supposed to be me (at) craigwatson(dot)org