Of the several announcements that were made at Shuttle’s CES press conference here in Las Vegas, the most compelling is their solution to a long-time problem with notebooks and netbooks: the lack of easily upgrading individual components. Their solution is the Shuttle PCB Assembly (SPA) form factor. It is available in two flavors–SPA for notebooks from 13.3 inches on up, and uSPA for netbooks between 10.1 and 13.3 inches. This can be viewed in a similar fashion to the ATX and mATX platforms currently available for desktop systems.

One of Shuttle's prototype notebooks based on SPA

OEMs can currently choose from a combination of the two form factors, seven different platforms (ULV, Pinetrail, etc), two primary graphics options (discrete and UMA), and seven screen sizes for each form factor for a total of 196 hardware combinations. Add into this the two options for discrete graphics (AMD and NVIDIA), and you are looking at 392 possible combinations. Further multiply by the different models of CPU and graphics card models that should be available and you’re probably looking at well over 9,000 total options. Did we mention that external graphics solutions will be available as well?

Also new to the SPA notebooks is a set of technologies collectively called i-Power. It consists of:

• i-Power USB: Charges USB devices when the laptop is turned off
• i-Power Xross (pronounced cross): Switches between overclocked and power-saving modes
• i-Power Charger: 3x faster charging than average notebooks
• i-Power On-Screen: Auto-detection of external displays
• i-Power GXT: External graphics card solutions

Minimum order for OEMs is in the hundreds range of units versus the standard of thousands which should definitely help get the platform standard established. OEMs will be able to custom design their systems using Shuttle’s eSPA web site which should be up and running by March of this year. User-built laptops will be possible in the future. This is something Shuttle is working on, but Shuttle CEO David Chen says they are still “a few steps away” from it.

Perhaps the biggest indication of SPA’s future potential is the current support of the full supply chain–CPU, memory, hard drive, and graphics manufacturers have all partnered with Shuttle to make the platform into a reality. This is certainly an exciting time if you are looking for a new notebook or netbook.

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1. Six cores in a small form factor? Shuttle says “sure”