Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), the global leading motherboard, Mini-PC, Notebooks, mobile device, IoT, IoV, and smart solutions provider, is proud to announce the participation of the "2020 CES'' at Booth No. : 40842, Sands Expo, Level 2, Hall A-D, Las Vegas from January 7 to 10. We will introduce our latest technology and smart application equipment to provide complete solutions for edge computing, digital signage, IoT, IoV, modern classroom and so on. Versatile Utilization out from Multi-functional Sorts of PCs

ECS is going to kick off CES with much fanfare, firstly announcing the new LIVA Mini PCs and All-in-One PCs adopted in all kinds of situations with our continuous innovation to fulfill the needs of being used in various categories like entertainment, offices, schools, banks, transportation etc. In addition, ECS's aggressive endeavor on the collaboration and exploration with our partners blossoms this year, and we also keep discovering more potential. A series of successful applications springs up in the scenarios of information KIOSK, retail store, vending machine, hospitality, smart home, public security and children's safety system.

Today Intel's CPU based on yet unannounced architecture got revealed in the SiSoft benchmark database. Featuring six cores and twelve threads running at 3 GHz, it appears like a regular 14 nm CPU that's already available, however, when digging through the details, many things are revealed. The newly submitted CPU has a different L2 cache configuration from previous CPU offerings, with this chip featuring 1.25 MB of L2 cache per core, it is unlike anything else Intel currently offers. Ice Lake mobile chips feature 512 KB, while the highest amount of L2 cache is currently present on i9-10980XE, which features 1 MB of L2.

It is unknown where this CPU fits in the whole 14/10 nm lineup, as we don't know if this is an iteration of 10 nm Tiger Lake or the rumored 14 nm Rocket Lake CPU. All we know is that this CPU features new architecture compared to Skylake iterations that are currently being used, judging by L2 cache bump, which usually happens on new architectures. The platform used for benchmarking this CPU was SuperMicro X12DAi-N SMC X12 dual-socket motherboard, which featured two of these new CPUs for a total of 12 cores and 24 threads.

LG Electronics' newest gram laptop computer series - the LG gram 17 (model 17Z90N), LG gram 15 (model 15Z90N), LG gram 14 (model 14Z90N) and 14-inch LG gram 2-in-1 (model 14T90N) - is designed to set a new standard for portable computing and will satisfy the needs of the most demanding users. The 2020 lineup of LG gram laptops stick to the company's winning formula - lightweight, compact, long battery life - while adding even more performance.

At the heart of the new series is the 10th Generation Intel Core processor with Iris Plus graphics and up to 24 GB of dual-channel DDR4 memory. With double the graphics processing power of last year's models, content creators will love having the speed and power to edit 4K video on-the-go and users will marvel at how smooth games can be with Iris Plus built-in.

Today, Intel announced the Intel RealSense lidar camera L515, the world's smallest and most power-efficient, high-resolution lidar that captures millions of depth points per second. Designed with proprietary technology that creates entirely new ways to incorporate lidar into smart devices to perceive the world in 3D, the L515 provides high-quality performance and millimeter accuracy to products that require vision capabilities.

"Intel RealSense technology is used to develop products that enrich people's lives by enabling machines and devices to perceive the world in 3D. With the L515 depth camera, we are excited to bring high-resolution lidar performance to markets previously inaccessible to this technology."
-Sagi BenMoshe, corporate vice president, Intel RealSense Group

During the IEDM event hosted by the IEEE organization, ASML's CEO, Martin van den Brink, took the stage to elaborate more on ASML's vision of the future of semiconductors. When talking about the future of semiconductors, Mr. Brink started talking about Intel and their vision for the future. Intel's slides were showing many things including backporting of IP to older processes and plan to go back to "tick-tock" two-year cadence to restore the previous confidence in Intel's manufacturing capabilities.

Perhaps one of the most interesting notes about the presentation is the fact that Intel is working hard to realize its plans of bringing back a two-year cadence of "tick-tock" process realization. That means that in the future, presumably after 10 nm debut problems are solved, Intel wants to do the old process and optimization tactics. A slide (shown below) titled "In Moore We Trust" is speaking a lot about Intel's future plans, showing few things in particular: Intel's upcoming 10 nm++ and 10 nm+++ nodes, and the possibility of backporting.

A group of cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new security vulnerability affecting Intel processors, which they've craftily named "Plundervolt," a portmanteau of the words "plunder" and "undervolt." Chronicled under CVE-2019-11157, it was first reported to Intel in June 2019 under its security bug-bounty programme, so it could secretly develop a mitigation. With the 6-month NDA lapsing, the researchers released their findings to the public. Plundervolt is described by researchers as a way to compromise SGX (software guard extensions) protected memory by undervolting the processor when executing protected computations, to a level where SGX memory-encryption no longer protects data. The researchers have also published proof-of-concept code.

Plundervolt is different from "Rowhammer," in that it flips bits inside the processor, before they're written to the memory, so SGX doesn't protect them. Rowhammer doesn't work with SGX-protected memory. Plundervolt requires root privileges as software that let you tweak vCore require ring-0 access. You don't need direct physical access to the target machine, as tweaking software can also be remotely run. Intel put out security advisory SA-00298 and is working with motherboard vendors and OEMs to release BIOS updates that pack a new microcode with a mitigation against this vulnerability. The research paper can be read here.

"Nothing Really Ends" is the title of a song from dEUS, a Belgian "art-rock" band. And it would seem this applies all too well to the world of technology too. Intel has issued a Product Change Notification (PCN) which has changed the previously dead and buried, Haswell-era, 22 nm Pentium G3420 from its "Discontinued" status back to a worded "canceling this Product Discontinuance completely per new roadmap decision and enabling the product long term once again." Which means the Pentium G3420 will have a new lease of life, and will be available to customers until May 2020, with final shipments on December of the same year.

This is clearly an attempt from Intel to increase part availability for OEMs and system manufacturers, who have already been quoted as considering AMD due to both increases in performance and efficiency in their processors, as well as constrained supply from Intel, with giant Dell already having pointed the finger at Intel as a cause for their lower than expected revenue.

Thermaltake, the leading PC DIY premium brand for Cooling, Gaming Gear and Enthusiast Memory solutions, today announced the release of the Thermaltake TOUGHRAM Z-ONE RGB DDR4 Memory Kit 3,200 MHz, which is supported by Intel and AMD platforms. Featuring 10-layer PCB construction for enhanced performance and stability, the TOUGHRAM Z-ONE RGB is equipped with high-performance components including tightly-selected memory chips, 2oz copper inner layer for enhanced electrical conduction, and 10μ gold fingers for high resistance ensuring ultimate gaming performance.

Furthermore, the TOUGHRAM Z-ONE RGB memory can be controlled by our software to monitor the real-time temperatures, frequency and performance and create stunning lighting effects with over 25 lighting modes. Users can also sync with TT RGB PLUS to maximize unique settings for their RGB color theme. Synchronize TT RGB PLUS, TT AI Voice Control, Razer Chroma, and Amazon Alexa RGB with TOUGHRAM Z-ONE RGB, users can build their own ecosystem with 10 super-bright addressable LEDs for stunning 16.8M RGB illumination. The TOUGHRAM Z-ONE RGB also support motherboards that have 5 V addressable RGB headers - ASUS Aura Sync, GIGABYTE RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light Sync and ASRock Polychrome.

Today TEAMGROUP's gaming brand T-FORCE announces the release of the world's first mirror design T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB Gaming Memory, leading the industry with full mirror reflection, light penetration and ARGB three major core technologies. Up to DDR4 4800MHZ of frequency offers a smooth user experience. The mirror design enhances the detail of the texture and it has an incomparable dominance in both visual beauty and gaming performance.

With creative thinking, T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB Gaming Memory is the first in the industry to feature full-screen light guiding technology. After researching optical principles and characteristics of light, special designed LED lighting method and Addressable RGB LED (Addressable RGB: A single LED capable of emitting colours independently and controlling speed) are used to allow players to change the RGB lighting freely. The product's full mirror screen is a combination of special spluttering process and full-screen light guiding technology, which is capable of directly penetrating and reflecting surrounding products. The optical beauty of gaming memory can be re-interpreted innovatively. The highest frequency of T-FORCE XTREEM ARGB is up to DDR4 4800 MHz. Its IC chips are selected through a rigorous testing process. Each of them is tested for complete compatibility and stability. This gaming memory with a magic mirror is specially designed for gamers and PC DIY enthusiasts.

That news title should come as a surprise to no one, and extends to most other PC makers who are affected by Intel's inability to keep up with demand on its 14 nm (+++++?) node. News of Intel's factories being outputting less than the entire professional and consumer markets are required has already been covered multiple times and in multiple ways. Sand steps Intel has taken to mitigate this issue whilst trying to solve its 10 nm execution woes range from moving chipset production up from its 14 nm nodes to 22 nm to free capacity, increase production capacity over the already installed one, and even outsource some of its silicon manufacturing to other players in the industry. However, these measures won't actually take effect in the availability equation in a heartbeat, and of course PC makers such as Dell, who has already revised its revenue forecast and placed the blame on Intel, are looking to alternatives.

Intel is currently performing negotiations to acquire Israeli AI chip startup, Habana Labs, according to a person who spoke to Calcalist anonymously. If the deal realizes, Intel will pay between one and two billion USD, making it Intel's second-largest acquisition of an Israeli company. When asked about the potential deal, the Intel spokesperson has stated that the company will not respond to rumors surrounding it, while Habana Labs has yet to respond to a request for comment made by Calcalist.

Founded in 2016 by Israeli entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz, who founded Galileo Technologies and Annapurna Labs, Habana Labs develops processors for training and inference of Machine Learning models. This acquisition would allow Intel to compete better in the AI processor market and get new customers which were previously exclusive to Habana Labs.

Intel Corporation today announced it has completed the sale of the majority of its smartphone modem business to Apple. This transaction, valued at $1 billion, was announced on July 25, 2019. As previously disclosed, this transaction enables Intel to focus on developing technology for 5G networks while retaining the option to develop modems for non-smartphone applications, such as PCs, internet of things devices and autonomous vehicles.

The "Willow Cove" CPU core design succeeds "Sunny Cove," Intel's first truly new CPU core design in close to 5 years. "Sunny Cove" is implemented in the 10 nm "Ice Lake" microarchitecture, and "Willow Cove" cores are expected to debut with the 10 nm+ "Tiger Lake." It turns out that Intel is working to adapt "Willow Cove" CPU cores onto a 14 nm microarchitecture, and "Rocket Lake" could be it.

Twitter user @chiakokhua, a retired VLSI engineer with high hit-rate on CPU microarchitecture news, made sense of technical documents to point out that "Rocket Lake" is essentially a 14 nm adaptation of "Tiger Lake," but with the iGPU shrunk significantly, to make room for the larger CPU cores. The Gen12 iGPU on "Rocket Lake-S" will feature just 32 execution units (EUs), whilst on "Tiger Lake," it has three times the muscle, with 96 EUs. "Rocket Lake" also replaces "Tiger Lake's" FIVR (fully-integrated voltage regulation) with a conventional SVID VRM architecture.

An independent study conducted by the European Hardware Association (EHA) has revealed that AMD now ranks higher than Intel in the CPU space. While we have seen this as recently as last week, where we reported on top sellers across some Amazon webstores in Europe, with AMD scoring most of the top sellers in both Germany and the UK, this is the first time a comprehensive study has put some verifiable, science-generated numbers for us to see.

According to the EHA, 60% of the European PC enthusiasts (in a sample of 10,000 respondents) showed a strong sentiment towards AMD as their favored manufacturer of CPUs, and would choose any sort of system with an AMD CPU over an Intel one (including APU, AMD + Radeon graphics cards and AMD + NVIDIA graphics cards). This is a far cry from the same time around last year, where AMD only held 40% of a similar sample's preferred buying intention, and up from the 50% shown in the same study, carried out in 2H2019. The same survey also shows a slightly increased preference for AMD's graphics cards, with the 1H2019 showing 19% preference compared to 23% in this latest study.

The leading global motherboard & graphics card manufacturer, ASRock, a pleasure to launch brand new compact Mini PC - Mars Series. Supports up to Intel Core i5 Quad-Core processor, 32 GB DDR4-2666 MHz, PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD, 2.5-inch hard drive, and wireless connectivity; all implies into 0.7-liter chassis with 26 mm height.

ASRock Mars offers abundant USB devices connectivity, features a total of 7 USB ports, including one Type-C port; In addition, the native SD card reader and dual display outputs to provide more productive and convenience.

Samsung has reportedly secured a "PC CPU" manufacturing order from Intel. This would entail Intel using Samsung's fabs to manufacture its processors. "PC CPU" is a broad term, interchangeable with "client CPU," and could include both notebook and desktop processors, spanning the "S," "H," "U," and "Y" silicon variants (mainstream desktop, mainstream notebook, ultrabook, and ultra low-power, respectively). Samsung's bouquet of contract-manufacturing covers not just silicon fabrication across 14 nm, but also sub 10 nm nodes, but also provides other key stages of processor manufacturing, including bumping and packaging. Intel would want minimal expenditure in adapting its chip designs to Samsung's nodes

In her November 20 letter addressed to Intel's customers, executive V-P and GM for sales, marketing, and communications, Michelle Johnston Holthaus, mentioned that in addition to Intel's own manufacturing facilities, the company is roping in "foundries" (third-party silicon fabrication companies) to meet demand. Samsung and TSMC lead the foundry business, followed by the likes of GlobalFoundries, UMC, etc.Many Thanks to biffzinker for the tip.

Intel's 11th generation Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processor will come in core-counts only up to 8, even as its predecessor, "Comet Lake-S," goes up to 10. Platform descriptors for Intel's next four microarchitectures surfaced on the web, detailing maximum values of their "S" (mainsteam desktop), "H" (mainstream notebook), "U" (ultrabook), and "Y" (low power portable) flavors. Both "Comet Lake-S" and "Rocket Lake-S" are 14 nm chips. "Comet Lake-S" comes with core counts of up to 10, a TDP of up to 125 Watts, Gen 9LP iGPU with 48 execution units, and native support for up to 128 GB of DDR4-2667.

The "Rocket Lake-S" silicon is interesting. Rumored to be yet another derivative of "Skylake," it features up to 8 CPU cores, the same 125 W maximum TDP, but swanky Gen12 iGPU with 32 execution units. The memory controller is also upgraded, which supports DDR4-2933 natively. There is no "Ice Lake-H" or "Ice Lake-S" in sight (no mainstream notebook or mainstream desktop implementations), ditto "Tiger Lake." For the foreseeable future, Intel will only make quad-core designs of the two 10 nm microarchitectures. "Rocket Lake-S" is slated for 2021 when, hopefully, we'll see Intel escape the 14 nm black hole.

Will Intel even make client-segment gaming discrete GPUs now? Because the GPU marketing gurus Intel snatched from AMD to sell them, Chris Hook and Heather Lennon, are reportedly no longer with the company. The two are on their way to an unnamed startup. This, according to a sensational Charlie Demerjian report citing company sources. These exits closely follow that of another valuable chip marketing honcho, John Carvill, who joined Austin-based startup Nuvia, which is designing ASICs and SoCs for the data-center of the future.

Hook and Lennon were responsible for the PR dexterity AMD RTG enjoyed through its ups and downs this decade. With RTG head Raja Koduri leaving for Intel to head its GPU development project, his former comrades at RTG soon followed. The flight of GPU marketing talent out of Intel at this stage could be the first of many hints that Intel has made a big decision with regards to how it plans to monetize Raja's work. "Ponte Vecchio" is Intel's ambitious GPU compute processor designed primarily for HPC and AI workloads. There's tumbleweed coming out of Intel on "Arctic Sound" since Q2-2019, a contraption that more closely resembles graphics cards as you know it.

PC major Dell in its quarterly results call blamed Intel for cuts in its revenue forecast for 2019 (full year) sales. "Intel CPU shortages have worsened qtr-over-qtr, impacting our commercial PC and premium consumer PC Q4 forecasted shipments," said Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke. Intel's CPU shortages are caused due to demand in the PC and server markets significantly outpacing supply, and not because Intel is supplying below its capacity. The company increased its capex toward manufacturer by $1 billion YoY, retrofitting its manufacturing facilities to make 14 nm processors, all while juggling resources to execute its 10 nm rollout for high-volume mobile and high-margin server processors.

The company hasn't launched 10 nm desktop or HEDT processors, yet, and is reportedly preparing yet another 14 nm line of processors for these platforms, codenamed "Comet Lake." This microarchitecture has also seen a mobile rollout for mainstream mobile form-factors, while Intel focused 10 nm "Ice Lake" for ultraportables and ultra low-power form-factors. Intel executive VP for sales Michelle Johnston Holthaus recently wrote a letter to its customers (primarily companies like Dell,) informing them that despite their best efforts, demand continues to beat supply, and that they hadn't managed to solve their supply issues.

Intel is readying a microcode update specially for its X299 Express chipset, to enhance the overclocking capabilities of its 10th generation Core i9 XE "Cascade Lake-X" processors. News of the update was put out in an MSI press release that speaks of the company encapsulating the new microcode in BIOS updates for its entire socket LGA2066 motherboard lineup.

"To enhance the overclocking capability for the newly launched Intel Core X-series Processors (Intel Core i9-10980XE, 10940X, 10920X, 10900X), Intel will provide a new microcode update," the statement from MSI reads. Besides "overclocking capability," the new microcode also helps to "maximize the overall performance" of "Cascade Lake-X" processors," says MSI. The company does not describe what specifically these changes are. The microcode update will be released to end-users as BIOS updates by motherboard manufacturers, so be on the lookout for one, if you're using "Cascade Lake-X."

Intel is reportedly looking to sell its connected home devices division, a company unit used for designing semiconductors that enable WiFi connection in all kinds of devices and SoCs made for managing network devices like WiFi routers. Following a previous deal, where Intel sold its modem division to Apple for 1 billion USD, Intel is now looking to "get rid of" another unit that is not doing any data-centric design workload.

The Connected Home division had around 450 million USD last year in annual sales, but it seems that competition is getting good with competing offers from Broadcom Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. If the unit is potentially sold to another company, Intel could rewire its R&D funds to other groups inside the company. Additionally, it is worth to mention that a financial advisor has reportedly been hired to evaluate any possible offers that Intel receives.

The European cooling and PC Case brand SilentiumPC presents the improved version of its Fortis 3 CPU cooler. For the Fortis 3 RGB HE1425, SilentiumPC has applied nickel-plating of the whole heat sink, which on the one hand visually enhances the tower cooler and on the other hand protects the material from corrosion. The tower cooler is also equipped with the brand-new Stella HP RGB 140 mm SE PWM fan, which not only enables modern RGB lighting, but is also more powerful at the same time. SilentiumPC is able to enrich the market with an improved and powerful tower cooler, which is particularly suitable for PC upgrades as well as new PC systems with modern RGB lighting.

In the course of the modernization of the Fortis 3, SilentiumPC gives the Fortis 3 RGB a finishing touch. The difference to the predecessor model can be seen right away, due to the fact that the Fortis 3 RGB has all copper elements as well as the aluminium fins carefully nickel-plated. This gives the tower cooler a uniform, high-quality look and protects the material from corrosion. The black coated top plate features covers for the heatpipe end pieces and the embossed SilentiumPC logo. Thanks to the five 6 mm copper heat pipes that form the base plate contact surface on the Fortis 3 RGB and the large cooling surface, the tower cooler is capable of effectively cooling modern high-end processors.

Intel late Monday released its SSD 665p "Neptune Harbor Refresh" line of client-segment M.2 NVMe SSDs. The series was announced in September at the company's Storage Day event in South Korea. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, the drives feature PCI-Express 3.0 x4 host interface. They combine a Silicon Motion SMI2263 series controller with Intel's new 96-layer 3D QLC NAND flash memory. The previous-generation SSD 660p series use 64-layer chips. The SMI2263 controller is cushioned by an LPDDR3 DRAM cache.

Intel is debuting the SSD 665p series with just two models, 1 TB and 2 TB, skipping sub-terabyte capacities such as 500 GB. The 2 TB variant offers sequential transfer speeds of up to 2000 MB/s reads and up to 2000 MB/s writes; and random access speeds of up to 250,000 IOPS on both reads and writes. The 1 TB variant offers up to 2000 MB/s sequential reads, up to 1925 MB/s sequential writes, up to 160,000 IOPS random reads, and up to 200,000 IOPS random writes. The company didn't reveal endurance ratings for the drives. The 1 TB variant is priced at USD $125, while the 2 TB variant hasn't yet been priced. Both drives are backed by 5-year warranties.

G.SKILL, the world's leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is pleased to announce the release of new high-performance and high-capacity quad-channel memory kits for the latest Intel X299 and AMD TRX40 high-end desktop (HEDT) platforms, including the high-capacity DDR4-3600 CL16-19-19-39 256 GB (32 GB x8), DDR4-4000 CL18-22-22-42 256 GB (32 GB x8), and the high-speed, low-latency DDR4-4000 CL15-16-16-36 64 GB (8 GB x8) specifications. By bringing ultra-high 32 GB memory module capacity into the realm of HEDT computing, powerful workstations are now truly able to achieve a complete combination of high core count processor with high-speed, high-capacity memory for heavy workloads or for running more virtual machines than ever.

Intel is partnering with MediaTek on the development, certification and support of 5G modem solutions for the next generation of PC experiences. As part of the partnership, Intel will define a 5G solution specification, including a 5G modem to be developed and delivered by MediaTek. Intel will also provide optimization and validation across the platform and lend system integration and co-engineering support to further enable its OEM partners.

"5G is poised to unleash a new level of computing and connectivity that will transform the way we interact with the world. This partnership with MediaTek brings together industry leaders with deep engineering, system integration and connectivity expertise to deliver 5G experiences on the next generation of the world's best PCs." -Gregory Bryant, Intel executive vice president and general manager of the Client Computing Group.