Good things in small packages.

AMD has unveiled an open standard specification designed to encourage the adoption of small form factor PCs.

The chip firm's DTX standard will be used to encourage OEMs and component vendors to deliver smaller, quieter and more desktop-friendly machines.

DTX will take advantage of the existing ATX infrastructure, including cost efficiency, system options and backwards compatibility. AMD plans to publish a review copy of the DTX specifications this quarter.

Bob Brewer, corporate vice president of AMD's Desktop Division, said: "DTX will allow the broad ecosystem to develop small form factor solutions and deliver new, innovative and cost-effective systems to businesses and consumers."

The DTX standard will be designed to embrace energy-efficient processors and allow a 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.

DTX will also be designed to provide improved motherboard layout standardisation, while being sensitive to the needs of OEMs and component vendors, according to AMD.

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.

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