AMD Announces DTX Open Standard To Help Adoption Of SFF PCs

AMD announced development of DTX, an open standard specification designed by AMD to enable the broad adoption of small form factor PCs. The DTX standard will be designed to empower OEMs, ODMs, and component vendors to deliver solutions to market that are smaller, quieter, and desktop-friendly, while leveraging commonalities within the ecosystem that benefit both customers and end users. The DTX standard will take advantage of the existing ATX infrastructure and benefits, including cost efficiency, system options and backward-compatibility, to allow for newer PC design. A review copy of the DTX specifications is planned to be made available by AMD in Q1'2007.

The DTX standard will be designed to embrace energy-efficient processors from AMD or other hardware vendors, and allow an optimally designed small form factor system to consume less power and generate less noise. When processor power consumption is reduced, system size and cooling costs can also go down. Energy efficient processors can also help extend the longevity of PCs, while offering consumer and business users a quiet, more pleasant experience in their offices or living rooms.

OEMs will also be able to enjoy the inherent cost benefits of standardization. With the DTX open standard specification, the potential exists for the small form factor market to reap the similar benefits to what the ATX standard has done for the desktop market in recent years.

DTX will be designed to provide improved motherboard layout standardization, while being sensitive to the needs of OEMs, ODMs, and component vendors. As the desktop market moves to lower thermal design power (TDP) processors and works to lower costs, an eye to balancing interchangeability of components with small form factor products becomes critical. In addition, DTX chassis vendors can help mitigate the financial risk associated with proprietary small form factor designs by offering DTX-standard products to the channel, in either component form or as bare-bones systems. The general DTX specification will only define a minimum set of parameters necessary for interoperability, freeing vendors to innovate.

• DTX, which will allow up to four motherboards – for low cost – per standard printed circuit board manufacturing panel sizes; and
• Mini-DTX, which will allow up to six motherboards – for low cost – per standard printed circuit board manufacturing panel sizes;
• DTX motherboards can be manufactured in as few as four-layers of printed circuit board wiring for motherboard cost savings.
• By leveraging backward-compatibility with ATX infrastructure, vendors may gain a low-cost DTX product offering with little development expense.

Source: AMD

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