Intel Corporation today reported first-quarter 2020 financial results. "Our first-quarter performance is a testament to our team's focus on safeguarding employees, supporting our supply chain partners and delivering for our customers during this unprecedented challenge," said Bob Swan, Intel CEO."The role technology plays in the world is more essential now than it has ever been, and our opportunity to enrich lives and enable our customers' success has never been more vital. Guided by our cultural values, competitive advantages and financial strength, I am confident we will emerge from this situation an even stronger company."

In the first quarter, Intel achieved 34 percent data-centric revenue growth and 14 percent PC-centric revenue growth YoY. The company maintained essential factory operations with greater than 90 percent on-time delivery while supporting employees, customers and communities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes a new Intel Pandemic Response Technology Initiative to combat the virus where we can uniquely make a difference with Intel technology, expertise, and resources.

Hold on to your helmets: a wild rumor that Intel may be looking to introduce the same design considerations as they already did with their Lakefield architecture has appeared. According to momomo via Twitter (a user who has already shared many rumors and details in the PC hardware space) as well as some other sources, Intel is looking to bring a Big.Little-like design (which Intel calls Hybrid architecture) to the desktop platform in the form of Alder Lake-S, to be reportedly built on the 10 nm process. While Intel's Lakefield (especially geared for the mobile market) only sported four Atom (Intel's low power) Tremont cores combined with one high-performance Sunny Cove core, Alder Lake-S could sport as many as an 8+8 configuration, with a TDP currently set up to 80 W (and up to 125 W TDP is also set in the revealing slides with a disclosure regarding investigating performance scaling in up to 150 W TDP).

Should this actual Alder Lake-S product materialize in the 10 nm process, this could be a way for Intel to salvage what it can from the 10 nm process for the desktop platform. As we know from multiple reports on the state of Intel's 10 nm, yields and operating frequencies aren't close to what was expected, and Intel's CFO George Davis even said at last week's Morgan Stanley's Analyst Conference that their 10 nm process wouldn't be as profitable as even 22 nm, which does show that Intel is already looking past this process for their 7 nm deployment. A Big.Little design for a desktop architecture does seem like a more plausible design decision for a struggling process than a full 16-core monolithic die such as those Intel currently employs.

Unlocking the full potential of 5G requires transforming network infrastructure from core to edge. As the world's leading network silicon provider, Intel is at the forefront of driving this transformation. Today, the company made a sweeping set of hardware and software announcements, including the launch of the new Intel Atom P5900, a 10 nm system-on-chip (SoC) for wireless base stations, which is a critical early deployment target for 5G networks.

"As the industry makes the transition to 5G, we continue to see network infrastructure as the most significant opportunity, representing a $25 billion silicon opportunity by 2023," said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the Data Platforms Group at Intel. "By offering customers the fastest and most effective path to design, deliver and deploy 5G solutions across core, edge and access, we are poised to expand our leading silicon position in this growing market."

Microsoft today has released several microcode updates for Intel CPUs. The updates are meant to be applied in a case-by-case basis under their Windows 10 operating system, and these updates target several releases of that OS (ranging from version 1507 through version 1903/1909). These address several vulnerability exploits related to side-channel and speculative execution attacks on Intel CPUs.

The updates need to be installed specifically for the Windows OS version you're rocking, and on systems with CPUs affected by the vulnerabilities and covered by this microcode update release. These include Intel's Denverton (Atom C3000 series); Sandy Bridge, Sandy Bridge E and EP (2000 and 3000 series), Valleyview (Atom Z3000 series) and Whiskey Lake U CPUs (8000U series, 5000U series, and 4200U series). These updates must be installed manually by users.

It seems many companies just never learn, you would think with Bethesda's various controversies surrounding Fallout 76 that they would have taken a step back and reevaluated their position. You would also think that their first decision would not have been to add more horrendously overpriced downloadable content to their Atom shop. However, instead of making an educated decision Bethesda continues to march straight for the cliff like a group of lemmings.

What did they do this time you ask? Well, they decided to offer more absurdly priced bits of cosmetic gear. First up was their Holiday Emote bundle for 1200 Atoms which is 50% off the regular 2400 Atoms. Next is the Mr. and Mrs. Claus outfits listed for 2000 Atoms, down from 3000. Finally theres the Red Rocket Mega Sign for 1400 Atoms. All told buying those three featured items from the Atom Shop would run you about 4600 Atoms or $40 which is coincidently the highest price the game sells for currently. It would appear Bethesda really wants to earn back their development costs on this one.

Synology Inc. today launched DiskStation DS1819+, an 8-bay desktop NAS providing outstanding performance with great expandability, ready to grow as your business thrives. "This is a compact NAS with an expandable design that can be an ideal investment for small to medium-sized businesses, especially when capable of hosting versatile applications." Said Kevin Meng, product manager of Synology Inc. "As an updated 8-bay desktop NAS in the Plus family, DS1819+ provides a performance increase of over 57% in sequential reading compared to its predecessor, making it more than capable of being just a file server or backup target to satisfy various business requirements with its all-inclusive built-in applications."

AAEON, an ASUS company and a leading developer of network solutions, releases the FWS-2360, a desktop network security appliance with the added assurance of Intel QuickAssist Technology (QAT) and the speed and efficiency of fiber cable ports. Compact and highly extendable, the ready-to-go white box solution is tailor made for SOHO businesses, domestic networks, and vCPE and edge applications.

In addition to its pair of fiber/copper SFP GbE ports are four conventional GbE ports and two Mini-card slots to accommodate WiFi and 4G LTE expansion. The system's inbuilt bypass function also ensures that network traffic will continue to flow in the event of software complications or loss of power. Further expansion capabilities are provided by an mSATA socket and a SATA III Port with a 2.5" HDD Bay, giving customers a choice of mass storage possibilities.

Security researchers have found glaring security flaws with Intel Management Engine, the on-chip micro SoC that, besides governing the functionality of the processor, provides on-chip management and security features. These security flaws render "potentially millions" of PCs and notebooks, based on Intel processors, according to the researchers. Intel on Monday released a Detection Tool application that lets you identify vulnerabilities in the Management Engine of your Intel processor-powered PC, and suggests updates to Intel Management Engine drivers, or points to BIOS updates from your PC manufacturer.

Updates to Intel ME are specific to TXE 3.0 (trusted execution engine version 3.0), which is featured on processors based on "Skylake," "Kaby Lake," and "Coffee Lake" micro-architectures, across client- and enterprise market segments, and Atom processors released in the past three years. Intel chronicled this security flaw further under Security Advisory 86, and released the SA-00086 Detection Tool.

Compulab announces immediate availability of fitlet2. Based on Intel Atom x7-E3950 Processor (Apollo-Lake) with up to 16 GB RAM and storage options ranging from eMMC to 2.5" SSD, fitlet2 is one of the most versatile miniature PCs for IoT. fitlet2 functionality can be further extended with Compulab 2nd generation Function and Connectivity Extension T-Cards (FACET Cards). Like all other Compulab mini-PCs, fitlet2 is completely fanless, available at wide temperature range and is sold with 5 year warranty.

Miniature fanless design
fitlet2 measures only 112 mm by 84 mm, making it one of the smallest full-featured PCs on the market. An all-metal die-cast housing is used for fanless passive heat dissipation. There are several optional versions of the housing including low-profile 25mm and an industrial top cover for direct-mounting.

ASRock Rack, a new division of ASRock which deals with enterprise-grade motherboards, introduced the C3758D4I-4L, a mini-ITX motherboard based on the Atom C3758 "Denverton" SoC that embeds an 8-core CPU clocked at 2.20 GHz, 16 MB of cache, and a dual-channel DDR4 integrated memory controller supporting up to 256 GB of ECC memory, topped off with a 25W TDP. These specs lend Denverton quasi-enterprise credentials. The C3758D4I-4L can be used for low-cost rack-mount web-servers, or even high-end DIY NAS or home-server builds.

The C3758D4I-4L comes with a factory-fitted fan-heatsink cooling the pre-installed Atom C3758 BGA SoC. The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors (including a 4-pin connector for external 12V). The SoC is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots, supporting up to 128 GB of dual-channel ECC memory; and a PCI-Express 3.0 x8 slot. Storage connectivity includes a staggering 13 SATA 6 Gbps ports, five on board, eight via two mini SAS connectors. An ASPeed AST2500 provides display, legacy I/O, and remote management. The board features a staggering five 1 GbE connections with teaming, PXE, and NCSI support. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Compulab launched its most compact mini PC, the fitlet2. Designed to be more of an IoT hub than a low-power desktop, the fitlet2 measures 112 mm x 84 mm (LxD), with the lower-power models being just 25 mm in height, while the higher-powered models, with slightly faster processors, being 34 mm tall thanks to the aluminium top panel that doubles up as heatsink for the SoC underneath.

The fitlet2 is powered by either Intel Atom x5-E3930 (6W TDP), x7-E3950 (12W TDP), or Celeron J3455 (10W TDP). There's one DDR4 SO-DIMM slot, letting you add up to 16 GB of memory, and an M.2-2260 slot with PCIe x2 and SATA wiring. Connectivity options include 802.11ac + BT 4.1 WLAN, up to two gigabit Ethernet interfaces, two each of USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, HDMI and mini-DP display outputs. Compulab is also developing a new generation of MintBox (fitlets with pre-loaded Linux Mint), based on the fitlet2.

GIGABYTE today announced its latest motherboard based on Intel's 'Denverton' architecture. This new CPU architecture offers a whole new level of performance efficiency in the cold storage and enterprise network space. This motherboard is the first in the product series and adopts the top-end SKU of Intel's next generation Atom(R) Processor C3000 Product Family - the C3958 - and addresses the cold-storage and network-edge needs of efficiency-conscious users . The major development in this platform is around the core count, performance/power leadership and flexible, highly-integrated I/O. These enable performance improvements of up to 2.5x generation-on-generation which support light, low-cost storage and scale-out applications.

We recently covered how users with systems powered by Intel's Clover Trail CPUs were having issues with a "Windows 10 is no longer supported on this PC" error when trying to update their machines to Microsoft's latest Windows 10 Creators Update. The systems in question - built around Intel's Clover Trail Atom processors - are generally low-cost, low-power machines (mainly 2-in-1) released between 2012 and 2015 under Windows 8 and 8.1. These systems were deemed ready to receive Windows 10; however, now it looks as if they won't ever be able to support it.

In our last piece, we wondered if this problem was only temporary; now it seems it's permanent. Microsoft has however announced that Clover Trail-based systems will still receive security updates (just not feature updates) until 2023. The issue seems to lay with Clover Trail's integrated GPU drivers; Clover Trail Atoms use GPU technology licensed from Imagination Technologies. Ars Technica's Peter Bright says that "Imagination appears unwilling, and Intel appears unable, to update the GPU drivers to meet the demands of the Creators Update. So systems built with such hardware will never be upgradable beyond the Anniversary Update."

As part of its new "Windows as a Service" model, Microsoft elected to provide users with a guaranteed, steady stream of updates with virtually no clear, hard-defined EOL. However, Microsoft took refuge, as well it should, from an increasingly difficult support for different hardware sets: a little footnote, saying that you are eligible for Windows 10 for the "supported lifetime of the device." Yes, it's true you now don't have to purchase a new Windows version. But that also means that your devices potentially won't be supported for Microsoft's previous 5 + 5 policy (meaning, 5 years of feature and security updates, and 5 extra years for security updates only.)

The systems in question - built around Intel's Clover Trail Atom processors - are generally low-cost, low-power machines (mainly 2-in-1) released between 2012 and 2015 under Windows 8 and 8.1. These systems were deemed ready to receive Windows 10; however, they are currently blocked from installing Windows 10 Version 1703 - the "Creators Update." Attempts to install result in a message saying that "Windows 10 is no longer supported on this PC." The problem is that each Windows 10 update receives security fixes for just 18 months. Version 1607, the latest that these Clover Trail machines can install, will drop out of support in early 2018 - after which they'll cease to receive any patches at all.

Synology Inc. launched DiskStation DS1517+ and DS1817+ together with the Expansion Unit DX517 today. These powerful and scalable 5-bay and 8-bay tower servers offer a high-performance, reliable, and versatile network-attached storage solution for tech enthusiasts and small/medium-sized businesses. The exciting new feature in DS1517+ and DS1817+ is the inclusion of a PCIe slot, which allows users to install an optional 10GbE network interface card or Synology's new M2D17 M.2 SATA SSD adapter. In addition, DS1517+ and DS1817+ both come in 2GB and 8GB memory configurations, which can be upgraded to 16GB thanks to the easily accessible memory compartment.

Installing an additional network interface card allows enthusiasts and businesses to take advantage of up to two 10GbE ports to boost maximum throughput. When combined with the Intel Atom quad-core 2.4GHz processor and equipped with optional dual channel memory, DS1517+ and DS1817+ can deliver sequential throughput performance up to 1,179 MB/s reading and 542 MB/s writing speeds. With the introduction of Synology's new M2D17 PCIe adapter card, DS1517+ and DS1817+ can be equipped with dual M.2 SATA SSDs, allowing users to enhance performance and latency using SSD caching without occupying the front drive bays.

Intel's Atom CPU line may bring back ugly memories of the netbook era and slow, underpowered devices that were often jokingly compared to the compute power of a common potato, but this latest line of Atom CPUs appears to have evolved into something much different.

At the high end of the C3000 line, Intel is talking in terms of 16-core CPUs, and not 16-core weaklings either. The announcement includes some features borrowed from the coveted Xeon line, such as hardware virtualization, and RAS (reliability, availability, and serviceability) which is a tech designed for enterprise data needs.

Synology Inc. is aware of a new processor erratum discovered in the Intel Atom C2000 family. After in-depth investigation, the possibility of seeing accelerated degradation of a certain processor component is rare after prolonged and heavy usage. This erratum is not known to cause data loss, nor any safety hazards. Based on hundreds of thousands of shipped products equipped with Intel C2538 processors since 2014, Synology has not seen any abnormal error rates compared to products equipped with different Intel processors.

As of today, all products equipped with Intel C2538 processors are performing in-line with Synology's quality standards. As a testament to our confidence in Synology's product reliability, we are extending the warranty for Intel C2538 based products by an additional year. A dedicated service email, has also been implemented for further questions.

Intel today announced the launch of a new generation of Intel Atom processor, the Intel Atom processor E3900 series, designed from the ground up to support the rapid development and the growing complexity of Internet of Things (IoT) businesses. The Intel Atom processor E3900 Series delivers excellent performance and a unique set of features for the edge in segments such as industrial, automotive, video, manufacturing, retail, and more. Intel is also offering an automotive grade processor specifically to address in-vehicle experiences called the Intel Atom processor A3900 series.

Intel Corporation today announced products and solutions that will deliver new user experiences and support the computing ecosystem's expansion into new areas. During the opening keynote address at Computex 2015, Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Client Computing Group encouraged the Taiwan ecosystem to work together and capture the opportunity to shape the future of computing.

"The power of Moore's Law has enabled incredible computing innovation over the past 50 years and because of it, nearly everything in the future will have the ability to compute and connect," said Skaugen. "Our 30-year history of collaboration with Taiwan has delivered historic innovation to the world, from personal computing to the cloud and data centers. The next 30 years will see even greater innovation as we deliver new computing experiences and bring intelligence and connectivity to the Internet of Things together."

The Intel Compute Stick, a new pocket-sized computer based on a quad-core Intel Atom processor running Windows 8.1 with Bing, is available now through Intel Authorized Dealers for much of the world.

The Intel Compute Stick can transform any HDMI display into an entry computer capable of working with productivity apps, playing local or streamed content, driving basic digital signage or enabling thin clients. It will support Wireless 802.11 b/g/n, a microSD card for expandable memory, MicroUSB power supply and Bluetooth 4.0 for keyboard and mouse.

Intel Corporation CEO Brian Krzanich today announced a series of mobile platforms including the company's new low-cost system-on-chip (SoC) for phones, phablets and tablets, a global LTE solution, innovative personal computing experiences, and a range of customers for mobile device and network infrastructure offerings. With technologies that span silicon, software and security, Krzanich said Intel was one of the few companies able to deliver solutions end-to-end, for devices, the network and the cloud.

The announcements include the Intel Atom x3 processor series, Intel's first integrated communications SoC solution for the growing value and entry device markets, and the five-mode Intel XMM 7360 LTE Advanced solution, designed for performance and worldwide coverage. In addition, Krzanich highlighted joint efforts with Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Huawei to address the demand for new telecommunications, cloud and data center services, improve network efficiencies, and accelerate the industry's move toward a software-defined infrastructure.

In order to help people understand the level of processor performance and make an informed purchase decision based on their needs, Intel Atom processors will now be offered in three distinct brand levels in a good/better/best construct - the Intel Atom x3, x5 and x7 processors. This change will start with the next generation of processors. Intel Atom x3 processor provides basic, but genuine Intel-level tablet, phablet and smartphone performance.

Intel Atom x5 processor has more capabilities and features for people who want an even better experience, and the flagship Intel Atom x7 processor provides the highest level of performance and capabilities for the Intel Atom family. The Intel Atom processor is designed to provide the best battery life with great performance for tablets, phablets, smartphones and other mobile devices. This infographic lists Intel's consumer brand portfolio for consumer devices including the Intel Core processor, Intel Core M processor, Intel Atom processor, Intel Pentium processor and Intel Celeron processor.

Lenovo today announced at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show its new lineup of YOGA convertibles and tablets with new technologies that take flexibility and interactivity to a new level. The family includes the thin and light YOGA 3 in 11-in and 14-in models (in a 13-in chassis) built especially for today's on-the-go and digitally-hungry consumers; the ThinkPad YOGA, optimized for businesses in a 12-in model, and a 14-in and 15-in model for pro-sumers with optional Intel RealSense 3D camera; and the 8-in YOGA Tablet 2 with Windows, featuring Lenovo AnyPen Technology, that turns nearly any pen into a tablet writing tool.

Lenovo today announced more choice for consumers with the expansion of its popular YOGA line of tablets with the new YOGA Tablet 2. Consumers can now for the first time choose Windows models, available in 8-in and 10-in sizes. Lenovo is also offering new Android models in 8-in and 10-in models with the new 13-in YOGA Tablet 2 Pro.

With even more features that adapt to users like the new Hang mode and improved kickstand, these tablets give consumers a new way to do more of the things they love. Designed for today's mobile and digital lifestyles, they feature captivating audio, high resolution cameras, Intel Atom processors and dual band speed WiFi with optional 4G1 supported by the Intel XMM 7160 modem.

Lenovo today announced a new way to read, watch, connect and create with the new YOGA Tablet 2 Pro. Developed with Ashton Kutcher, who joined Lenovo as a product engineer a year ago, the new YOGA Tablet 2 Pro redefines the tablet experience. Not only does it surprise and delight users with a number of premium technologies, it delivers innovation that ties together hardware and software innovation in a new way.

Designed to focus on an elevated media experience, the YOGA Tablet 2 Pro has as its star feature a built-in Pico projector. The projector lets users turn inside walls into an instant TV or movie screen. Lenovo paired this premium technology for great video with unbelievable sound by giving the tablet a first - an 8 watt sound system with a subwoofer. These exceptional features along with a host of other technologies make the YOGA Tablet 2 Pro like no other tablet.