NVia announces Mini-ITX 2.0
VIA PUT ON AN entertaining press conference with Nvidia at Computex, interesting more for what it didn't say than what it did. To spoil the surprise, there was no NV chipset for Via announcement, but that is still happening.
The main story was Mini-ITX 2.0. If you recall, Mini-ITX 1.0 was defined by Via years ago, and laughed at by Intel. Once AMD came out with DTX, Intel stopped laughing and embraced it for low end machines and Atom.
All is not well in Mini-ITX land though because of Intel marketing restrictions. Intel is desperately afraid of cannibalising its own higher end parts, so it forces manufacturers to cripple Atom boards.
With Mini-ITX 2.0, Via is taking a preemptive shot across the bow at Intel and forcing the issue out into the open. Intel will not allow you to make an Atom board with a PCIe 16x slot, Via insists on it with 2.0. They also insist on two SATA ports, a PATA port, 4 USBs, 2GB of memory, and HDMI.
What they are doing is saying to customers 'if Intel is crippling your platform, step up to Via'. Given that Via is a little more power hungry and a lot cheaper, it might be a very compelling argument for OEMs and emerging markets. It has the same footprint and mechanicals as 1.0, so it should be just a board swap out as far as OEMs are concerned.
Far more interesting was the love-in between Via and Nvidia. They spent the better part of half an hour praising each other but saying nothing really substantial. It was like a White House Intelligence briefing without the need to take a long shower afterwards.
They did not announce a new chipset for Via parts, they did not announce the new boards bearing that chipset, nor did they announce anything all all. They love each other though. Really.
Timothy Chen even kissed Drew Henry's bald head, a scene that is almost as scarring as that time at IDF when... Ahem. Nice weather, eh?
The Via press conference was all about what wasn't said. They are trying to poke holes in the weak spots in Intel's lineup, and Nvidia is glad to be there to lend a helping boot to the kicking. If Intel insists on its marketing restrictions, Via will do quite well with this strategy. µ
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They insist on PATA? Why? Someone should ask them that already, let's get that info out.
Mind you it makes more sense to support PATA on a mini that you can't expand with add-on cards than on full-size, especially high end motherboards meant for enthusiasts, I mean if you can afford 3 PCIe graphics cards one can assume you don't need support for old DVD drives from yesteryears, or even a PS/2 connectors for mice, for which they don't even sell mice anymore I don't think.
Perhaps the idea is that you slam together a mini with old parts?
"It was like a White House Intelligence briefing without the need to take a long shower afterwards."

That was the most beautiful/accuarte description that I've read in a long time. Kudos to the author, and kudos to Via for offering a great/affordable product. 
"Given that Via is a ... lot cheaper"

I love Via and it's products dearly but, pray, what world is this in ?
PATA interface is very very widespread, lots of components use it (compact flash drives for example), which makes great sense to include it.

Its a timeless interface, and for the same reason most fullsize motherboards still include an RS232 interface.
Yes, it is about time to drop those legacy PATA and PS/2 ports. I know one of the vendors tried it several years ago, and it didn't take off, but honestly, does anyone think that keeping those legacy ports around is required? My most recent build, I was amazed that I couldn't find a MB without 'em, even in the micro ATX form factor.
" They insist on PATA? Why?"

Well, for one thing, it gives us somewhere to put there brilliant little things:

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/fdm40xdi4g

OK, they're a little pricey, but there's definitely something to be said for a decent amount of storage that effectively has zero physical footprint in the system.

Still, I wouldn't touch another Via anything with a bargepole. Their support is laughable, and with the range of boards I've tried so far, there seems to be about a 50% chance that everything will just work. With Intel's LIttle Valley Mini-ITX boards, that figure has been 100% so far.

Little Lake, with its Atom and 945 chipset, won't set any speed records, but should cut power consumption quite nicely, and above all, should be reliable.
Don't forget Mini ITX's embedded heritage, they've probably kept it for PATA-to-Compact Flash adapters and the like
Compact flash to IDE PATA.

on most VIA boards, they provide power threw the IDE port to power these adapters so the adapter doesn't need external power.

A lot of embeded systems use these adapters. And some of these adapters are direct insert into the PATA port not needing an IDE cable.

CF has a build in IDE interface.
I think the pata is used for compacted flash cards, to replace the main hd with a cheap solid state drive using an adapter
it seemed odd so i checked:
the MB got: "2 SATA's and 1 IDE"

from the :"Nettop Platform for 2008
System Design White Paper"
at 
http://download.intel.com/design/processor/applnots/319980.pdf
see for yourself.

Via CPU, NV IGP+HDMI+HDCP + MCP(ish) things aught to make Intel a very scared little kitten. 
It seems Intel's bullying and outright b*****dish scare tactics have finaly pushed the industry away. About bloody time too...

Via has been working on the SFF market for years and has pushed a huge majority of it's considderable muscle into making it a work of art, Yes fair enough we've never seen a via cpu that could compare to the pure brawn of the Core 2 range... but bang for watt, Via has dffinately a competetive edge. 
Nvidia's grapics and core logic sollutions are probably going to be the best friend for Via's gear in the comming future and especialy in the media PC and micro notebook markets which are expanding at a rapid rate of knotts.

This is going to be fun to watch