IBASE Technology Inc. (TPEx: 8050), a world-leading manufacturer of industrial motherboards is releasing a new mini ITX motherboard, MI991, with a Socket H4 (LGA1151) socket and the Intel C236 chipset. System integrators can benefit from the MI991 equipped with space-saving compact configuration and rich I/O design for maximum flexibility.

IBASE MI991 supports up to three independent displays via Intel HD Graphics: DVI-D, HDMI, and DisplayPort, as well as DDR4 32GB limitation on two memory slots. It uses the more expensive Intel i211 controller instead of Realtek controllers for the motherboard alongside the Intel chipset i219 NIC device. Friendly features also include eight USB, four serial ports, four SATA III as well as two Mini PCI-E, an mSATA and a PCI-E(16x) expansion slot.

GIGABYTE unveiled a new high-end socket LGA1151 motherboard, the X170-Extreme ECC. Positioned as a workstation motherboard for the high-end desktop crowd, this board is based on Intel C236 chipset, and comes with support for Intel Xeon E3-1200 V5 processors in addition to 6th generation Core "Skylake" processors. It also supports DDR4 ECC memory, which partly lends it its name. Built in the standard ATX form-factor, the board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors. Expansion slots include two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (x8/x8 with both populated), a third PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (electrical gen 3.0 x4, wired to the PCH), and three other PCIe 3.0 x1 slots.

A star attraction here is GIGABYTE's choice of an Intel-made 2-port USB 3.1 controller, which connects to the PCH over PCI-Express 3.0 x4, compared to most other USB 3.1 controllers in the market, which connect over PCI-Express 3.0 x2. This ensures consistent 10 Gb/s bandwidth dedicated to each of the two ports, without any bandwidth loss to overhead. The board offers one each of type-A and type-C ports, wired to this controller. The board offers an additional four USB 3.0 ports from the chipset and a Renesas-made hub chip. Also on offer is a 40 Gb/s Thunderbolt 3 port, with DisplayPort 1.2 passthrough.

According to a leaked company slide doing rounds on the web, Intel plans to launch its workstation-grade Xeon "Broadwell-EP" processors by March 31, 2016. These chips will be branded under the Xeon E5-2600 V4 series. HP is ready with a workstation based on these chips, the HP Z640, which succeeds the Z620 that's driven by "Haswell-EP" Xeon chips. Dollar-for-Dollar, Intel is positioning the "Broadwell-EP" to offer at least "20% more cores and last-level cache" than "Haswell-EP."

This would mean Intel leveraging the 14 nm process to cram 10-core chips at the price of an 8-core chip from the previous generation, 8-core chips at the price of 6-core ones, and so on. The same slide mentions that "Broadwell-EP" offers, on average, 18% more performance than "Haswell-EP." Intel is also hinting at native support for DDR4-2400 MHz. Haswell-EP supports DDR4-2133 MHz.

Thecus Technology Corp, today announced the launch of two new enterprise-class NAS, the N12850 and N16850. These 12 and 16-bay network-attached storage solutions offer massive scalability, exceptional performance, supporting cross-platform file sharing, schedulable snapshots and resilient data integrity, to ensure a highly efficient working environment.

"Businesses today are seeking a NAS system that can best handle the demanding day-to-day high storage needs that occur in the workplace. Our new enterprise-class N12850 and N16850 NAS series are the solution. With advanced data protection and integrity mechanisms, these rackmounts NAS provide the ideal choice for storing a business's crucial data." said Florence Shih, CEO of Thecus Technology Corp.

This week on TechPowerUp News: NVIDIA giving final touches to a new mid-range SKU, likely named the GeForce GTX 950 SE or GTX 950 LE; a 45W, 16-core "Broadwell" Intel Xeon chip, and NVIDIA "Pascal" GP100 chip crunching 4 TFLOP/s double-precision floating-point.

The latest Intel Xeon D-1571 SoC, designed for high-density data-centers and micro-servers, sets a new benchmark for energy efficiency. If the fact that it's an SoC (a combination of CPU and chipset) wasn't enough, the chip also crams in 16 CPU cores based on the "Broadwell" architecture, with HyperThreading enabling 32 logical CPUs, running at 1.30 GHz clock speed, a dual-channel DDR4 memory controller that supports up to 128 GB ECC DDR4 memory, and 24 MB of shared L3 cache; all at a TDP rated at just 45W. On most high-density server boards, such as the X10SDV-series by Supermicro (pictured below), the chip will cooled by just a small fan-heatsink. Such specs won't come cheap. Server board vendors will buy the Xeon D-1571 at $1,222 a piece in 1000-unit quantities.

CERN engineer Liviu Valsan, in a recent presentation on datacenter hardware trends, presented a curious looking slide that highlights some of the key features of AMD's upcoming "Zen" CPU architecture. We know from a recent story that the architecture is scalable up to 32 cores per socket, and that AMD is building these chips on the 14 nanometer FinFET process.

Among the other key features detailed on the slide are symmetric multi-threading (SMT). Implemented for over a decade by Intel as HyperThreading Technology, SMT exposes a physical core as two logical CPUs to the software, letting it make better use of the hardware resources. Another feature is talk of up to eight DDR4 memory channels. This could mean that AMD is readying a product to compete with the Xeon E7 series. Lastly, the slide mentions that "Zen" could bring about IPC improvements that are 40 percent higher than the current architecture.

This week on TechPowerUp News: Intel 6th gen. Core "Skylake" processors freeze over under certain kinds of stress; AMD's big price-cut for the super-small Radeon R9 Nano, and the fabled 5.10 GHz Intel Xeon processor.

Intel's first 5-gigahertz CPU will bear an unlikely brand - Xeon. The company's upcoming Xeon E5-2602 V4 quad-core chip based on the 14 nm "Broadwell-EP" silicon, is rumored to ship with a staggering 5.10 GHz clock speed out of the box. Getting there won't be easy for this socket LGA2011v3 chip. Despite being a quad-core chip, with just four out of ten cores on the "Broadwell-EP" silicon bring physically enabled, the chip's TDP is rated at 165W. Other features include 10 MB of L3 cache, and a quad-channel DDR4 memory interface.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, is proud to launch a whole new series of High-End Desktop (HEDT) motherboards with the X170 and X150 series, based on Intel C236 and C232 chipset. In addition to supporting the new Intel Xeon E3-1200 v5 processor and ECC DDR4 memory (for select motherboards), the new motherboards are also compatible with Intel 6th Gen. Core i3, Pentium and Celeron processors.

These new high-end desktop motherboards will bring support for Xeon Processors to users who desire a professional solution whether it's for Photography, Designing, Video Streaming and more. "I know GIGABYTE is providing the best HEDT experience with the X170 and X150 Motherboards, combining performance, stability and durability," commented Henry Kao, Vice President of GIGABYTE's Motherboard Business Unit.

GIGABYTE Technology, a leading creator of high performance server hardware, releases today its line of server motherboards based on the Intel Xeon processor D-1500 product family, a System-on-a-Chip platform aimed at low power and high density server applications. This new lineup includes at launch four models of Mini-ITX boards mixing different SKUs of the Xeon D-1500 processors and different networking solutions.

Based on the Broadwell microarchitecture, the Intel Xeon processor D-1500 product family features System-on-a-Chip processors based on the 14nm process. Designed for high density and scale-out server infrastructures, these processors focus on high power efficiency while maintaining datacenter grade features. Through this density and computing power, this processor family aims at lowering the total cost of ownership of server, storage and networking applications.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, is proud to launch exciting new high-end desktop motherboards and a new lineup of the award-winning GIGABYTE BRIX powered by the 6th Gen. Intel Core processors.

At CES 2016, GIGABYTE will be showing off these groundbreaking products, along with our latest developments in IPC and IoT solutions in the Pacific Ballroom of the Bally's Las Vegas Hotel & Casino. There will be product demonstrations designed by case modders such as Richard Surroz, Marc Molella, and Bob Stewart of BS Mods. Aside from all the product demonstrations there will also be live overclocking on site from GIGABYTE's world renowned overclocker, HiCookie, and demo systems from multiple system integrators such as; Cybertron PC, NCIX, ABS, CyberPowerPC, Network Allies and Digital Storm.

MSI, leading in motherboard design, launches two new motherboards to fully utilize the power of the Intel Xeon E3 v5 series CPUs. The C236A WORKSTATION and C236M WORKSTATION motherboards are engineered to offer the best performance and stability for workstation, entry server and datacenter use, catering to the most demanding heavy-duty computer users.

MSI C236 WORKSTATION motherboards are optimized for professional and industrial use. Advanced PCB design, engineered using industry leading standards and the use of the highest quality components passing the most extreme quality validation, the C236A WORKSTATION and C236M WORKSTATION motherboards guarantee the best in performance and reliability. Designed and optimized for NVIDIA Quadro and AMD FirePro graphics cards multi-GPU setups, equipped with unique Steel Armor and optimal PCI Express slot placement ensure great efficiency and perfect stability for heavy duty computing.

When speed matters in high-performance computing (HPC) storage, Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX) and Newisys have the industry's fastest flash storage design. The two companies today announced that 21 Newisys NSS-2601 with dual NSS-HWxEA Storage Server Modules deployed with Seagate's newest SAS 1200.2 SSD drives can be combined in a single 42U rack to achieve block I/O performance of 1TB/s with 5PB of storage. Each Newisys 2U server with 60 Seagate SSDs is capable of achieving bandwidth of 49GB/s. Newisys is a division of Sanmina Corporation (NASDAQ: SANM) and a leading provider of data center products for enterprise and cloud applications.

"This is one of the highest storage densities ever achieved in the industry, and holds the potential for new breakthroughs in storage system performance," said Brett Pemble, VP and general manager of flash products, Seagate. "Our partnership with Newisys enables us to continue to innovate with how storage is architected." Applications that might benefit most from this flash solution include those where microseconds matter in processing massive amounts of data. These applications might include metadata caches for large data centers, as well as prediction models for financial markets, oil and gas, and weather that are constantly changing and in need of pushing the performance envelope in a constant race against time.

QNAP, Inc. has sprung another surprise on the enterprise storage marketplace with the announcement of the new TVS-ECx80U-SAS-RP unified NAS-SAS storage solution. This new system bridges the gap between all three different types of drives: speedy all-SSD storage, large capacity SATA drives and cost-effective SAS HDD systems.

The new TVS-ECx80U-SAS-RP series marries high-performance 12 Gbps SAS drives with built-in ultra-high performance 256 GB SSD caching. Powered by QNAP's new QTS 4.2 management software along with the new Qtier automated data-tiering technology, the system keeps frequently accessed data readily accessible and infrequently accessed data close at hand in less-costly HDD storage, significantly improving the overall performance while reducing data warehousing costs.

Thecus Technology Corp. today announced the expansion of its rackmount NAS line up with the addition of the N8900PRO. Embedded with the Intel Xeon E3-1275 Quad Core 3.4GHz processor, 8 GB DDR3 SDRAM (offered up to 32 GB), and an AES-NI hardware encryption engine, the N8900PRO offers business users with a powerful, full-featured solution for file management, data back-up and protection, along with a comprehensive set of business applications to ensure a highly efficient working environment.

"For businesses in need of a powerful, all-purpose NAS server, the N8900PRO provides a robust hardware platform to handle the rigorous day-to-day operations in the workplace," said Florence Shih, CEO of Thecus Technology Corp. "With the 8-bay, N8900PRO, users are able to deploy a high capacity, cost effective storage solution with ensured data protection and security."

Lenovo today unveiled the beginning of a new family of mobile workstation innovations, the ThinkPad P50 and P70, at the SIGGRAPH 2015 Conference and Exhibition. These new ThinkPad P Series systems are the best-performing and most reliable mobile workstations available and are designed to run the most demanding Independent Software Vendor (ISV) applications.

"We've built features into these machines that were previously unachievable in a notebook, making them the most versatile and highest-performing mobile workstations ever," said Victor Rios, vice president and general manager, Workstations, Lenovo. "We're focused on making sure users have the tools necessary to drive innovation. That is why we are expanding our portfolio and raising the standard of mobile workstation performance. Introducing the ThinkPad P Series unites our mobile portfolio with our existing award-winning line of tower workstations, the ThinkStation P Series."

ASUS formally launched the X99M-WS, a socket LGA2011v3 motherboard based on Intel X99 Express chipset, which it first showcased back in June, at Computex 2015. ASUS claims that this workstation-class motherboard is the most feature-rich X99-based product in the micro-ATX form-factor. The board supports Core i7 "Haswell-E" processors, in addition to certain Xeon E5 v3 series models. The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, two 8-pin EPS, and 6-pin PCIe power connectors. It uses an 8-phase VRM to condition power for the CPU, and 2+2 phase VRM for the memory. The board features four DDR4 DIMM slots, supporting up to 64 GB of quad-channel DDR4 memory.

Expansion slots on the X99M-WS include three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (permanent x16/x16/x8 or x8/x8/x8 when i7-5820 is used), and one PCIe x1. Storage connectivity includes eight SATA 6 Gb/s, and one M.2 32 Gb/s slot. Networking is care of two gigabit Ethernet interfaces (both driven by Intel I210 controllers), and one 802.11 ac + Bluetooth 4.0 WLAN interface. USB connectivity includes two USB 3.1 ports (both type-A), six USB 3.0 ports, and a number of USB 2.0/1.1 ports. 8-channel ASUS CrystalSound 2 audio, and an optional PIKE SAS module, make for the rest of it.

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."

GIGABYTE Technology, a leading creator of high performance server and workstation hardware, is happy to present today the MW70-3S0, its latest dual socket workstation motherboard based on the Intel C612 chipset. It joins the single socket MW50-SV0 to complement GIGABYTE's line of 2011-3 socket based workstation motherboards, and offers workstation builders a high end product featuring the latest technologies and the most reliable components. The MW70-3S0 has been designed with flexibility in mind, through large memory, storage and PCI-Express platforms that will satisfy the most demanding performance requirements of professional workstation users.

German server/workstation builder Deltatronic unveiled an otherwise impossible-sounding feat - a workstation that's completely fanless, and running Intel's Core i7 "Haswell-E" or Xeon E5-1xxx/2xxx "Haswell-EP" processors (up to 160W TDP), and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 or Quadro K4200 "Maxwell" graphics, completely fanless. The system runs on what the company calls a "heavy-duty convector cooler," which involves solid copper blocks over the CPU/GPU, from which nickel-plated copper heat pipes transfer heat onto a large aluminium panel with grooves, making it the system's heatsink. CPU options include the entire Core "Haswell-E" family, and Xeon E5 "Haswell-EP" family (including 160W TDP models), and GPU options include the entire GeForce "Maxwell" discrete GPU family. The cheapest option, with a Core i7-5820K and GeForce 210 graphics, starts at 1,990€.

Intel Corporation today announced the Intel Xeon processor E7-8800/4800 v3 product families, delivering accelerated business insight through real-time analytics and enhanced performance and reliability for mission-critical computing.

Real-time business intelligence is a top priority for companies across the full spectrum of industries, from healthcare to retail to telecommunications, among others. The need to rapidly extract actionable insight from large volumes of data is driving demand for new technologies for in-memory computing and big data analytics. Considering the current and future demand for in-memory computing, Gartner believes that revenue in this market will exceed $9.5 billion by year-end 2018, and at least 50 percent of large organizations will adopt in-memory computing to enable digital business strategies.

They've done it! After building the first LGA2011v3 motherboard in the mini-ITX form-factor, letting you cram up to 8 "Haswell" cores into a lunchbox-sized PC, albeit having to make do with just dual-channel memory; ASRock developed the first mini-ITX motherboard with not just LGA2011v3, but also its full quad-channel memory interface, called the EPC612D4I. There's just one rider, which shouldn't really be a dealbreaker - this is a server-grade motherboard, and is bound to be expensive.

The EPC612D4I achieves its quad-channel memory chops by using smaller DDR4 SO-DIMM slots instead of standard-sized DIMM slots. Availability of aftermarket DDR4 SO-DIMM memory is close to non-existent, but that could change with 6th Generation Core processor notebooks hitting the shelves by Holiday 2015. As an enterprise board, it also supports Xeon E5-1600 V3 and E5-2600 V3 processors.

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.

Intel Corporation todayannounced several new and enhanced technologies bolstering its leadership in high-performance computing (HPC). These include disclosure of the future generation Intel Xeon Phi processor, code-named Knights Hill, and new architectural and performance details for Intel Omni-Path Architecture, a new high-speed interconnect technology optimized for HPC deployments.

Intel also announced new software releases and collaborative efforts designed to make it easier for the HPC community to extract the full performance potential from current and future Intel industry-standard hardware. Together, these new HPC building blocks and industry collaborations will help to address the dual challenges of extreme scalability and mainstream use of HPC while providing the foundation for a cost-effective path to exascale computing.