Axiomtek, one of the world's leading designers and manufacturers of innovative, high performance and reliable PC-based industrial computer products, has introduced OPS880-HM, its new cost-effective OPS digital signage player with the support of 4K resolution. The OPS880-HM is powered by 4th Generation Intel Core i5 and i3 processors (codename: Haswell) with the Mobile Intel HM86 Express chipset. The OPS880-HM supports one DDR3L SO-DIMM socket with memory maximum up to 8GB. In addition, it features one mSATA interface as storage device and two PCI Express Mini Card slots for graphics-enhanced video card, wireless LAN card for 802.11 b/g/n and 3G/GPRS, and tuner/AV capture card. The outstanding OPS digital signage module is an ideal choice for various display applications in different environments, e.g., shopping mall, corporate, education, bank, transportation, retail store, restaurant, performing art center.

Intel Corporation unveiled innovative education-focused reference devices for the 21st century interactive learning environment today at Bett 2014. The new Intel Education Tablet and the Intel classmate PC are part of Intel Education Solutions, which includes devices, software, content, services and teacher professional development that work together to transform learning and teaching for student success.

Both the Intel Education Tablet and the classmate PC are student-friendly, rugged designs that can withstand dropping off a desk (from 70 cm) and provide water-resistance and dust-resistance to promote anytime, anywhere learning.

Intel's processor portfolio has just been expanded to include no less than ten new mobile offerings including five Core i7 models, four Core i5s and one Celeron chip. At the head of this new wave is the Core i7-4940MX which features 4 cores clocked at 3.1 GHz and bears a price tag of $1,096. This model takes the top spot in Intel's mobile line-up, pushing aside the 3.0 GHz i7-4930X.

This latest release wave also includes three ultra-low voltage CPUs, the Core i5-4360U, i5-4310U and the Celeron 2980U, the ladder being the cheapest of the lot, costing $107. The rest of the processors are found in the table below.

Intel Corporation today reported full-year revenue of $52.7 billion, operating income of $12.3 billion, net income of $9.6 billion and EPS of $1.89. The company generated approximately $20.9 billion in cash from operations, paid dividends of $4.5 billion, and used $2.1 billion to repurchase 94 million shares of stock.

For the fourth quarter, Intel posted revenue of $13.8 billion, operating income of $3.5 billion, net income of $2.6 billion, and EPS of 51 cents. The company generated approximately $6.2 billion in cash from operations, paid dividends of $1.1 billion, and used $528 million to repurchase 22 million shares of stock.

In an effort to make interaction with technology simpler, more natural and immersive, Intel Corporation today outlined how it, in collaboration with other companies, is bringing human-like senses to Intel-based devices in a new family of hardware and software products called Intel RealSense technology.

The Intel RealSense 3D camera is one of the first products in the new family and is the world's first integrated 3D depth and 2D camera module that helps devices "see" depth much like the human eye.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards announces its attendance at CES 2014, teaming up with Intel, G.SKILL and Enermax to host the 2014 CES Extreme Overclock event, also demonstrating a range of the latest enthusiast motherboards and systems.

Join GIGABYTE during CES 2104 at the Caesar's Palace Conference Center, Las Vegas from January 6th, 2014 where a GIGABYTE Overclocking team led by renowned Overclockers Hicookie and Dinos22 will be joined by other world class talent from around the globe, demonstrating all the skills and experience need to break world records on a GIGABYTE Z87X-OC motherboard.

"We are really excited about hosting some of the world's top Overclockers in Las Vegas," commented Hicookie, Chief Overclocking Evangelist, GIGABYTE Motherboard Business Unit. "It promises to be a fantastic OC showcase event, one that underlines our commitment to extreme overclocking and the development of world-class overclocking motherboards like the Z87X-OC."

The last Sunday of 2013 has seen Intel do a little price slashing, taking between 4% and 26% off the price tag of 31 processors, mostly mobile models. The only desktop chips that got a cut (between 9% and 11%) were three low-power Haswell-based chips, namely the Core i7-4770R, i5-4670R and i5-4570R.

On the mobile front we have lower prices for a trio of high-end quad-cores (i7-4960HQ/5% cut, i7-4950HQ/5% cut, i7-4850HQ/7% cut) as well as for a multitude of Celeron CPUs based on the Ivy Bridge, Haswell and Bay Trail architectures. The full list of price cuts is available in the table below.

Intel is planning to launch its 4th generation Core i7 HEDT (high-end desktop) platform, codenamed "Haswell-E," in the third quarter of 2014 (after June), which should space its launch roughly a year from Core i7 "Ivy Bridge-E." With Haswell-E, Intel is expected to increase core counts across the board, launching an "affordable" six-core part around the $400 mark, an eight-core part around the $600 mark, and an Extreme Edition eight-core part around the $1,000 mark. The three will be based on the LGA2011-3 socket, which has the same pin count as today's LGA2011, yet is incompatible with it, because the pin map of Haswell-E will differ from its predecessors'. Driving the platform will be Intel's X99 Express chipset, with support for up to ten SATA 6 Gb/s ports, and a large number of USB 3.0 ports. Some of the first X99 motherboards are expected to be unveiled at Computex 2014.

Mindspeed Technologies, Inc., a leading supplier of semiconductor solutions for network infrastructure, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to sell the assets of its wireless infrastructure business unit to Intel Corporation. The asset sale was contemplated by the agreement and plan of merger with M/A-COM Technology Solutions Holdings, Inc., announced on November 5, 2013.

"We are excited that our wireless infrastructure business is being incorporated into Intel," commented Raouf Y. Halim, chief executive officer of Mindspeed.

Akasa rolled out the Tesla H, an all-aluminium fanless case for Intel's second-generation NUC, based on its Core "Haswell" processor. At 240 x 150 x 48 mm, it's somewhere in between traditional NUCs and slimline mini-ITX cases; but uses that volume productively, in adding not one, but two 2.5-inch drive bays. The first one takes advantage of the standard SATA 6 Gb/s port on the D54250WYK motherboard, and the other requires the included mSATA to SATA adapter. The case is also compatible with Intel's D54250WYB and D34010WYB motherboards.

As mentioned earlier, the all-aluminium case features ridges along its body that let it double up as a passive heatsink for the Core "Haswell" processor and PCH. In addition to the two 2.5-inch drive bays, the Tesla H offers two front-panel USB 3.0 ports, HDA audio jacks, a USB infrared receiver, three holes for WLAN/Bluetooth antennae, a Kensington lock slot, and VESA wall mounts. Akasa didn't announce pricing or availability details.

Organizations can now achieve a higher level of storage performance with Intel RAID RS3 controllers, powered by LSI Technology. They are specifically designed to meet the demands of I/O-intensive applications, cloud datacenters and virtualized server environments.

Businesses that use Intel RAID RS3 controllers as the basis for their storage infrastructure can achieve more than 1 million IOPs in JBOD mode. With 12 Gb/s SAS-3 technology, it can accelerate business-critical applications in enterprise, Web and cloud datacenters.

According to some newly-leaked slides, Intel is planning quite a solid state drive release spree for the second quarter of 2014, one that will see the introduction of three storage solutions - the SSD Pro 2500 Series (codename Temple Star), SSD DC P3500 Series (Pleasantdale) and SSD DC P3700 Series (Fultondale). All three SSD families are going to utilize 20 nm MLC NAND Flash memory, will be available in two form factors and will be backed by a five-year warranty.

The National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) Supercomputing Research Center (RSC) has built the world's first switchless cluster computer. Known as the "CK-Star", this computer connects eight computers without switch control, thus breaking Intel's performance record. Together with the computer systems provided by Acer, the CK-Star is jointly built by NCKU RSC Director Dr. Chi-Chuan Hwang and Dr. Yuefan Deng of Mainland China's National Supercomputing Center in Jinan (NSCCJN), who is also a Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York (SUNY).

NCKU RSC Director Dr. Chi-Chuan Hwang added that CK-Star is the most unique switchless cluster supercomputer compared to traditional cluster supercomputer which requires switch control to control interaction between nodes. He explained that the weakness of the traditional one is that switches will become performance bottlenecks when the number of nodes is large. Besides, switches also consume large amount of power, estimated to be 50% of the total power consumption. With the introduction of the CK-Star which allows the unrestricted expansion of supercomputers, these problems can be overcome.

Intel has just revealed plans to discontinue two of its quad-core Ivy Bridge mobile processors, the 2.7 GHz Core i7-3820QM and 2.6 GHz i7-3720QM. Both models are being pushed aside to leave more room for Haswell-based chips.

The Core i7-3820QM and i7-3720QM will still be available for orders up until June 27th, 2014, and are set to ship till December 5th.

As SSDs play catch-up with HDDs on the capacity front, the focus will shift to NAND flash memory designers increasing transistor densities using newer silicon fabrication technologies. In the absence of that, SSD designers will have to cram more number of NAND flash chips to achieve desired high capacities. That throws up two key issues with having too many chips in one place - heat and power. Intel is gearing up to deal with heat on its upcoming "Fultondale" and "Pleasantdale" SSDs for data-centers. Leaked company documents seen by VR-Zone reveal renders of what Intel expects the drives to look like.

Built in the 3.5-inch form-factor the drives are built almost entirely of chunky metal, with a retractable top lid, and its body. The body doubles up as heatsink, it features metal ridges which dissipate heat drawn from the NAND flash chips of the SSD to the air. Internally, the drive will feature at least two PCBs, one which holds the controller, cache RAM (if any), and some NAND flash chips; while the other holds NAND flash chips entirely. How hot can things get? According to the source, the drive could draw as much as 25W of power. That could amount to enough heat to warrant a passive heatsink. Intel is expected to unveil the two drives at IDF Beijing, slated for Q4-2014.

Intel is continuing on its mission to establish Thunderbolt as the next universal device interconnect standard, despite steep competition from the 5 Gb/s USB 3.0, the upcoming 10 Gb/s USB 3.1, and stringent validation and licensing barriers on its own end. To that effect, the company outlined its mainstream Thunderbolt controller, which it plans to launch some time in 2014. The company is planning two major introductions to the standard, to help it compete against USB - power delivery, and ad-hoc (peer-to-peer) networking.

The controller, Broadwell Thunderbolt-LP, isn't designed too differently from what's available in the market. It handles a 20 Gb/s Thunderbolt link by aggregating two 10 Gb/s channels, relays DisplayPort 1.2 from the system's graphics device, and connects to the rest of the system over PCIe 2.0 x2. The chip is built in the 8 x 8 mm package, and features operational and idle TDP ratings of 1.5W and 1mW, respectively. The changes Intel is making to the standard will enable power delivery of up to 53W over a standard tethered cable. That's enough power to run a drive dock with up to six 3.5-inch hard drives, or a small (<24-inch) flat-screen monitor. The other big feature is ad-hoc networking, which enables people to set up peer-to-peer 20 Gb/s connections between two PCs much in the same way they did with USB and RS232, back in the day. While it's no Ethernet replacement, it could prove useful in certain environments, such as content-creation. Intel is expected to make some Thunderbolt-related announcements at CES, next January.

Organizations with a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) can now get a significant performance boost with the Intel SSD Cache Controller RCS25ZB040. Powered by LSI Nytro Technology, the Intel RCS25ZB040 is designed to expedite data across a VDI while decreasing the cost per desktop.

The Intel RCS25ZB040 accelerates VDI performance with intelligent caching technology, which monitors frequently accessed data and retains it on its enterprise-grade flash for faster access. Plus, it moves data faster across a VDI and reduces the cost per desktop within the infrastructure.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics chip shipments and suppliers' market shares for 2013 3Q. Q3'13 was the second quarter in a row to show a gain in shipments, up 1.6% quarter-to-quarter, but down 8.8% compared to the same quarter last year.

AMD's overall unit shipments decreased 4.2% quarter-to-quarter, Intel's total shipments increased 3.5% from last quarter, and Nvidia's increased 2.3%. The attach rate of GPUs to PCs for the quarter was 137%, which means only 73% of the PCs with embedded graphics are using them.

CMTL, Computer Memory Test Labs, the industry's leading independent memory compatibility and functionality testing lab announced today that G.Skill's 4 GB and 8 GB 1866MHz DDR3L (low voltage, 1.35v) SO-DIMMs have received Advanced Tested certification on the Intel NUC D53427RKE platform with i5 Ivy Bridge processor.

CMTL's President, John Deters stated, "Having high speed G.Skill SO-DIMMs Advanced Tested on the D53427RKE platform is great news for the Intel NUC customer base. The Intel NUC form factor platform is really catching on in the industry based on the number of test requests we are receiving. The NUC D53427RKE with G.Skill's 1866 MHz speed SO-DIMM provides a high performance system solution in a small compact form factor."

Intel Corporation unveiled innovations in HPC and announced new software tools that will help propel businesses and researchers to generate greater insights from their data and solve their most vital business and scientific challenges.

"In the last decade, the high-performance computing community has created a vision of a parallel universe where the most vexing problems of society, industry, government and research are solved through modernized applications," said Raj Hazra, Intel vice president and general manager of the Technical Computing Group. "Intel technology has helped HPC evolve from a technology reserved for an elite few to an essential and broadly available tool for discovery. The solutions we enable for ecosystem partners for the second half of this decade will drive the next level of insight from HPC. Innovations will include scale through standards, performance through application modernization, efficiency through integration and innovation through customized solutions."

The past year has seen a flurry of Thunderbolt related activity. Already present on every current Apple Mac, Thunderbolt has continued to grow within PC circles. And the Thunderbolt ecosystem responded, with over 100 Thunderbolt devices now shipping and available, most certified for both Mac and PC. Thunderbolt makes new experiences possible and developers are seeking to take advantage of Thunderbolt's key benefits, including simultaneous data and display transfer, with speeds of up to 10 Gbps, and daisy-chain connectivity of up to six devices. Building upon that foundation, the first Thunderbolt 2 systems were introduced in October this year, with speeds up to 20 Gbps, and support for the DisplayPort 1.2 protocol. Thunderbolt is clearly the fastest, most versatile connection to your PC.

Now we have a new announcement for you - an exciting new program to quickly expand the footprint of Thunderbolt for desktop and workstation users. This new initiative is called &quot;Thunderbolt ready&quot;, and it enables PC manufacturers to offer Thunderbolt upgradeable motherboards within desktop and workstation computers. By using a Thunderbolt card, Thunderbolt's blazing fast speed and uncompressed video capabilities can now be added to any motherboard that includes a GPIO header (general purpose input/output header), so even if your system doesn't have Thunderbolt it is now possible to &quot;upgrade&quot; to it. Users that are interested in adding Thunderbolt 2 technology to an existing Thunderbolt ready system can combine a Thunderbolt card with a growing number of enabled motherboards, all identified by the use of the &quot;Thunderbolt ready&quot; moniker. The Thunderbolt ready program makes it simple to identify which components work together to upgrade your PC with Thunderbolt 2 capability.

Intel has created a new organization to accelerate and broaden its reach into market segments and applications commonly referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT). Called the IoT Solutions Group, this new organization will combine the Intelligent Systems Group and Wind River organizations, bringing together the intelligent systems hardware, software, services and platform elements together into one organization.

This is the next step in the company's ongoing activities supporting the proliferation of IoT implementations across the industry. Intel will deliver solutions for companies that are investing in technologies to both drive operating efficiencies and create new services by connecting devices to each other and the cloud to transform their businesses. The new organization will be led by Vice President and General Manager, Doug Davis, a long-time Intel leader and embedded industry veteran and will report directly to the executive office (President and CEO).

Intel has yesterday updated its processor offer, adding no less than six new models, all Celerons and all targeting mobile devices. This fresh batch is of ultra-low voltage variety and it includes two chips based on the Haswell architecture, the Celeron 2981U and 2957U, and four on the Silvermont architecture (and part of the Bay Trail-M line-up), the Celeron N2920, N2820, N2815 and N2806.

Frequency-wise, the processors go from 1.40 GHz to 2.13 GHz, but they don't really vary in terms of pricing as five of them cost $132, while only the Celeron 2981U goes for $137. More details in the table below.

The TechPowerUp HWBOT team, in partnership with Intel, is announcing the TechPowerUp HWBOT Competition 2013. Spread across three tests which anyone can participate in - 3DMark 2001, 3DMark 03, and SuperPi 32M, the competition gives you the chance to win some cool new gear, including a Core i7-4770K quad-core processor, an AMD CPU and motherboard combo, and a PayPal cash prize. The contest is open from November 1, 2013 to December 15, 2013.

For more information, visit this page.

Here is the first picture of Akasa Tesla, the company's latest fan-less chassis for Intel's NUC (next unit of computing) system boards. When launched, it will be compatible with both generations of the NUC platform. It stays fan-less with its anodized aluminium body doubling up as a heatsink for the CPU, PCH, and other hot components. It's bigger than the average fan-less NUC case, and features room for two 9 mm-thick 2.5-inch drives, which can be anything between a fast SSD, or a spacious HDD. Not much else is known about the case, and one could expect a formal launch pretty soon.