At Computex last year, folks from VIA Technologies showed us an entire x86 PC motherboard no bigger than a business card. The board, which was based on VIA's Mobile-ITX form factor, combined a 600MHz VIA C7 processor and a single-chip chipset with integrated graphics.
At the ongoing Intel Developer Forum, Intel Ultra mobility group Senior VP and General Manager Anand Chandrasekhar has outdone VIA by presenting a motherboard that's even smaller than the Taiwanese company's Mobile-ITX product. As Engadget reports, Intel's board is designed to house Intel's upcoming Moorestown processor—the successor to Silverthorne—and it actually looks a little smaller than a credit card. The board Chandrasekhar showed wasn't populated with chips yet, but it's designed to accommodate a processor, chipset, 3G cellular radio, Wi-Fi controller, Bluetooth chip, GPS, and memory.Moorestown is scheduled for the 2009-2010 time frame, and according to Chandrasekhar's presentation (PDF), it will mark Intel's first entry into cell phone form factors. Intel expects Moorestown to trim idle power consumption tenfold compared to the Menlow platform, which Intel launched yesterday under the Centrino Mobile brand.