Shuttle Announces New Notebook Motherboard Standard

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Unlike desktop computers, whose motherboards were standardized by IBM, and later Intel, going way back to the early days of the IBM PC, notebook computers have never had such a standardization, making working on them or building your own difficult or impossible (for a good time, take a look inside a MacBook Air). Shuttle hopes to change that by introducing a standardization for notebooks called SPA (Shuttle PCB Assembly) and micro SPA.

Shuttle hopes their new SPA and micro SPA motherboard form factors will create a new “notebook ecosystem”. Shuttle isn’t just doing this for those of us who like to tinker with their computers – they also are appealing to manufacturers by saying that a standard motherboard design will save hardware engineering costs on new notebooks.

The SPA motherboards will be for notebooks that are 13-inches and bigger, while the micro SPA motherboards will be for 10-inches and up, and they’ll be focused on low-energy consumption (read: the micro SPA is for netbooks). AMD, Intel and VIA have all signed off on the new notebook form factors, and they’ll be able to produce sockets compatible with their processors.

Shuttle’s new SPA motherboards will also offer SPA’s “iPower” technologies, which allow the end user to do such things as charge USB devices from the notebook when it’s turned off,  or be able to charge the batteries three times faster than a conventional notebook.

At this point, it doesn’t look like Shuttle will be licensing the SPA motherboard form factors to other motherboard manufacturers, which probably will kill it in the long run. In the short run, Shuttle is offering everything from OEM-built completed notebooks ready for a Dell or Toshiba to slap their logo on, all the way down to barebones motherboards for manufacturers who want to build their notebooks from the ground up.