Oh! Gizmo

By David Ponce

We’re digging where all this miniaturization business is going. Just take a look at PQI’s wonderfully engrished, credit card sized U510 advert. And it seems like the expression “Credit card sized” is the de-facto standard when it comes to conveying to consumers just how small something is.

The CM-X270L, from Israeli company Compulab is no exception. It’s essentially a fully-fleshed PC that happens to be the size of (you guessed it) a credit card.

The CM-X270L measures just 4.4 x 6.6 cm. In comparison, a MiniPCI wireless card is 6.0 x 4.4 cm – just half a centimetre thinner.

In this space, the CM-X270L somehow manages to fit in an Intel (should that be Marvell?) XScale chip running Windows CE or Linux, half a gig of flash, 128MB of RAM, AC?97 sound and a Philips 802.11b wireless interface, as well as some things you wouldn?t find on a PDA, such as a PCI bus, 4 USB host ports and wired networking.

Course, it’s not something Average Joe consumer will buy. Rather, it’s meant to serve as a building block in embedded applications, and will set your company back $47 per unit, so long’s you order at least 10,000.

[Compulab's CM-X270L] VIA [Digg]