Apple has introduced a new 21.5-inch iMac starting at US$1,099. Featuring an ultra-thin design, a 21.5-inch display, Core i5 processors and the latest OS X operating system, the new iMac will be pushed to focus on the entry-level desktop market.The new 21.5-inch iMac features a 1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz, Intel HD 5000 graphics, 8GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive. All iMac models include next generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and two Thunderbolt ports and four USB 3.0 ports.The new 21.5-inch iMac is available through the Apple Online Store, Apple's retail stores and select Apple authorized resellers. Configure-to-order options include a 1TB hard drive, a 1TB Fusion Drive, and up to 256GB flash storage.Apple 21.5-inch entry-level iMac all-in-one PCPhoto: Company

Amazon has unveiled Fire, the first smartphone designed by the company and features Amazon's Dynamic Perspective and Firefly. Dynamic Perspective uses a new sensor system to respond to the way consumers hold, view, and move the Fire. Firefly quickly recognizes things in the real world, web and email addresses, phone numbers, QR and barcodes, movies, music, and products, and lets consumers take action in seconds, all with a press of the Firefly button.Dynamic Perspective uses four ultra-low power specialized cameras and four infrared LEDs built into the front face of Fire, a dedicated custom processor, real-time computer vision algorithms, and a new high-performing and power-efficient graphics rendering engine.Dynamic Perspective features include one-handed gestures for auto-scroll, tilt, swivel and peek for quicker, easier navigation and a better media and entertainment experience; and the enhanced carousel for developers to customize the contents of their dynamic app and how it responds to user actions, Amazon claimed.Firefly combines Amazon's catalog of physical and digital content with multiple image, text and audio recognition technologies to quickly identify web and email addresses, phone numbers, QR and barcodes, plus over 100 million items, including movies, TV episodes, songs, and products.Fire is built using materials including Gorilla Glass 3 for the rear and front, aluminum buttons, stainless steel details and a rubberized polyurethane grip area. The smartphone also features Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragon 2.2GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 4.7-inch HD display, global LTE and connectivity with nine bands of LTE, four bands of GSM, five bands of UMTS for better voice coverage and faster data speeds, 802.11ac support, Wi-Fi channel bonding, NFC, and Bluetooth.The smartphone is also equipped with a custom-tuned 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with backside illumination, LED flash, 5-element f/2.0 lens, Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), and HDR capabilities, and a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera.Fire ships on July 25 and is available exclusively on AT&T. Fire with 32GB is available for US$199 with a two-year contract.Amazon Fire smartphonePhoto: Company

AAEON, a major developer of industrial computing solutions, has released the world's smallest network appliance, the FWS-2250.The compact chassis and use of the Intel Atom E3815 processor has resulted in a highly affordable SMB/SOHO desktop unit. Equipped with four GbE ports with Intel controllers and with up to 8 GB installed in the two memory slots, there is ample memory, processing power and networking capability for applications such as small firewalls, IDS/IPS, load balancing, network access control, bandwidth management, web filters and anti-spam applications. Drawing only about 20 watts, the low power consumption is an added benefit.The AAEON FWS-2250 also offers a good selection of I/O ports. In addition to the LAN ports, there are also a CompactFlash socket, an RJ-45 console port and three USB ports. Furthermore, there is an optional Mini-PCIe port and bypass on one pair of the Ethernet ports.The greatest benefit considered to its compact size. "Compared to our competitors, the FWS-2250 is about 30% smaller in size, which save customers' shipping expense and provides SMB/SOHO users with secure and stylish network appliance" said Wayne Chen, CTO of AAEON. "We also offer a competitive price within the fanless solution market."About AAEONAAEON is a leading manufacturer of advanced industrial and embedded computing platforms. Committed to innovative engineering, AAEON provides integrated solutions, hardware and services for premier OEM/ODMs and system integrators worldwide. Reliable and high quality computing platforms include industrial motherboards and systems, industrial displays, rugged tablets, PC/104 modules, PICMG half-size and full-size boards and COM modules, embedded SBCs, embedded controllers and related accessories. AAEON also offers customized end-to-end services from initial product conceptualization and product development on through to volume manufacturing and after-sales service programs. AAEON is an Associate member of the Intel Internet of Things Solutions Alliance. http://www.aaeon.com/

Good Way Technology, a global leading USB peripherals and Docking solution provider, has announced the USB3.0 4K Ultra HD Docking station at COMPUTEX Taipei 2014, which shows its cutting edge of 4K display technology development.More and more 4K ultra-high resolution displays are in the markets. They are more affordable with features offering an amazing picture for work or even entertainment. Good Way Technology's USB3.0 4K Ultra HD Docking station is one of the major launch products this year in COMPUTEX, which is enabling DisplayPort display technology and 4K video over USB3.0 interface for Notebooks and other Desktop PCs. This result is great news for an industry on the cusp of widespread adoption of 4K video technologies. Good Way Technology is targeting the mass market with the desktop-friendly design of USB3.0 Docking station, which allowing user to display 4K resolution even through popular HDMI ports.This docking station is built-in USB 3.0 ports which could enable the Super Speed data transfer between USB peripherals and provide full backwards compatibility with older USB specifications. Also, Supporting BC1.2 charging port design is fitting the flexible demands on charging various mobile devices.The Docking station equipped with three USB3.0 downstream ports, one DisplayPort and one HDMI port and both with resolution up to 3840x2160, one DVI-I port with resolution up to 2048x1152, one stereo audio out, one mic in port and one Gigabyte Ethernet port. To meet the demands for handling massive files in 4K video production to proper displaying with different sized ultra-high resolution displays, Good Way Technology's solution is well tested and performed with Windows 8.1 DPI scaling enhancements to massively improve user experience.USB3.0 4K Ultra HD Docking Features• Support 4K UHD displays with DPI optimized capability • Backup of video display with resolution up to 2048x1152 through DVI-I ports• Support 4K UHD displays for HDMI or DisplayPort with resolution up to 3840x2160• Coexist with USB Battery Charging 1.2 specificationFor more information, please visit: www.goodway.com.tw.

Maxim Integrated announced that its lithium-ion (Li+) battery monitor is being used by Nissan for the Nissan Pathfinder Hybrid, a sport utility vehicle for the North America market. The Li+ battery system for the Nissan Pathfinder Hybrid is supplied by Hitachi Automotive Systems. Hitachi Vehicle Energy developed the system and incorporated Maxim's IC.Maxim's Li+ battery monitor provides self-diagnostics and robust daisy-chained data communications that easily handles the high-voltage requirements of the automotive industry. Maxim's highly integrated solution enables a smaller, lighter weight, and high-performance Li+ battery system in the hybrid. Using Hitachi's battery system with Maxim's Li+ battery monitor IC, the Pathfinder Hybrid achieves greater driving range than competitive systems and improves the overall safety of the battery system."Maxim's battery cell-monitoring IC was integral to achieving the highly reliable, smaller, lighter, and high-power Li+ battery system required for the newest hybrid car," said Mr. Koji Masui, Department Manager, Lithium Ion Battery Development Dept., Hitachi Automotive Systems, Ltd."The automotive market is a major focus for Maxim, and I am pleased that Nissan selected our cell-monitoring IC for its Pathfinder Hybrid," said Kent Robinett, Managing Director, Automotive Marketing for Maxim Integrated. "Maxim is advancing into a next-generation EV/HEV powertrain system, and we will continue to develop highly integrated products for this important market."Maxim, a leader in analog innovation and integration, is unique among semiconductor companies in its ability to integrate extensive and different analog functions on a single chip. Maxim's highly integrated solutions help customers produce smaller systems with greater energy efficiency.

The Delta Group today announced the release of the new education-focused Vivitek D755WTIR ultra-short throw interactive projector at Computex Taipei 2014. Ideal for small and space limiting environments with big presentation requirements, the compact D755WTIR can be easily installed in a space-limited classroom without compromising performance or user experience. With the optional finger touch interactive kit installed, the D755WTIR is turned into the ultimate and fun classroom study device to stimulate instruction and learning. The Vivitek D755WTIR combines a native WXGA projection with ultra short-throw technology and interactive whiteboard (IWB) functionality. The D755WTIR allow users to project larger images from shorter distances. From a distance of about 44.5cm (17.5") from the projection surface, this ultra-short throw projector can display a large 100-inch (diagonal) picture. The D755WTIR offers full IWB functionality with standard pen support and finger touch interactivity with the optional finger touch kit installed. With the finger kit installed, this enables a user(s) to just use their finger(s) to write or interact in a natural, intuitive and fun way. This interactivity allows for two way communications for simultaneous use between a teacher and student, and collaborative learning. The Vivitek D755WTIR features a brightness of 3300 lumens, a contrast of 5,000:1 and Texas Instrument's DLP BrilliantColor technology, ensuring stunning image quality. It can be easily integrated into a school's network, with the IT administration benefitting from the machine's system administration capability via RJ45. As is usual with Vivitek projectors, the D755WTIR feature multiple display connectivity ports, including HDMI, VGA-In, Composite, Video Out, and more. At 5kg (11lbs), the D755WTIR is compact in size and quiet in use at about 29dB (in ECO mode). It also has a convenient top-loading, sliding cover for quick and easy lamp replacement. Designed to be filter- and dust-free, the D755WTIR enables cool and efficient operation, which eliminates the need to replace or discard filters. This fabrication keeps the projectors running at top energy efficient levels. Vivitek D755WTIR Source: Company

At Computex Taipei 2014, WD, a Western Digital company, is demonstrating its first hard drive with PCI Express (PCIe) support. Technological cooperation with its partners has resulted in the creation of a storage product prototype that uses the SATA Express interface, allowing computers to easily exceed previous performance limits.With cloud computing and big data technologies advancing and telecoms gearing up for 4G LTE services, terminal data output rates have been increasing. Therefore, it can be anticipated that in tomorrow's digital world, data will be generated faster and users will be more demanding in terms of real-time data transmission. Although front-end access speeds have continued to improve, transmission speeds of the mainstream terminal storage interface SATA has been limited at 550MB/s. If this bottleneck could not be overcome, current and future high-speed applications would continue to be restricted.The SATA-IO organization spent three years developing the SATA Express specifications, which was announced and introduced in 2013, with a goal to create an environment where PCIe and SATA would co-exist, and the relatively superior bandwidth capabilities of PCIe could be used to enhance the read/write speeds of SATA storage devices. One year after the SATA Express specifications were unveiled, WD and its technology partners have built a corresponding prototype storage product to allow computer manufacturers to adopt SATA Express into their motherboards running on the Intel 9 series chipsets.WD's Senior Director of Platform Engineering Kevin Peterson has showcased the world's first-ever hard drive with PCIe support at Computex 2014.According to Kevin Peterson, in the future, the speed of global data creation is likely to dramatically increase, especially with IoT applications becoming more widespread, which will likely result in a steep growth. This will come as a strong contrast to the relatively flat growth of storage devices. This demand gap between the two sectors will create endless opportunities for hardware equipment vendors. However, whether or not they will be able to seize this business opportunity will depend on whether or not there is a high-speed interface available for speeding up data processing rates. It is clear that the SATA 6G specifications alone cannot meet user expectations.With SATA Express, vendors can use a new type of connector to simultaneously route both PCIe and SATA interface signals, thereby integrating the world's most popular computer bus with the world's most popular storage bus. This innovative combination allows users to use a single bus for SSDs, SSHDs, or HDDs. It also allows SATA's transmission speed to exceed the 550MB/s limit, further advancing toward the second-generation PCIe x2 interface's 900MB/s, or even the third-generation PCIe x2 interface's 1,800MB/s. Many of the storage applications that have been available in recent years have been developed around standard SATA technology, which is why SATA Express is an extremely meaningful development for users. SATA Express has the ability to provide a path for significant improvements to the existing applications environment.SATA Express features the SRIS (Separate RefClock with Independent SSC) technology that allows the removal of the PCIe Sync line. This means that PCIe components that support SRIS will automatically produce their own clock signals, without the main system and device having to jointly send reference clock signals, thereby achieving the benefits of SSC. This way, computer manufacturers can maintain synchronization between the main system and devices simply by using a general PCIe connection, thereby reducing overall connection costs.Kevin Peterson stressed that WD is at the forefront of SATA-based technologies, and clearly sees a future market where SATA Express will be the mainstream. This is why it is showcasing its SATA Express prototype at Computex 2014. This brand-new platform is built around a SATA Express core architecture in a dual hard drive environment consisting of a 128GB SSD and 4TB HDD. It also uses a standard AHCI driver, providing compatibility with existing user-end operating systems.Extensive tests have shown that the read/write speeds provided by this architecture are consistently maintained at 680-700MB/s, clearly exceeding the performance of traditional SATA technologies.However, there is clearly still room for taking the performance beyond 700MB/s to approach the 900MB/s limit of the second-generation PCIe x2 interface. Therefore, WD hopes that motherboard manufacturers will continue to work on it to boost performance to almost 900MB/s by using SSDs and HDDs with even better specifications, as well as optimizing the designs of their architectures. Furthermore, WD is looking to extend its partnerships from the PC motherboard sector to the server or even testing equipment sector, creating a diverse environment for the development of ubiquitous end-to-end high-speed storage applications.Kevin Peterson, Senior Director of Platform Engineering at WD

Atrenta Inc., the leading provider of SoC Realization solutions for the semiconductor and consumer electronics industries, announced that MediaTek has adopted Atrenta's SpyGlass DFT (Design for Test) tool suite to enhance its semiconductor design and verification flow. This addition has helped the team achieve stringent test coverage goals while meeting their challenging schedules."At Mediatek, we are committed to very high test coverage to ensure the highest possible quality products," said Andrew Chang, Corporate Vice President at MediaTek. "By adding SpyGlass DFT to our workflow, we have seen increases in our test coverage while finding problems very early in our flow. This has allowed us to meet our test quality goals, aggressive schedules and customer demands."Previous workflows waited until after implementation to look at testability of the design. This caused an increase in time and difficulty, to find and fix the many types of problems that can occur, often back in the RTL (Register Transfer Level) description. Atrenta allows the designers to determine and address testability issues upfront, in the RTL, while it is more feasible and cost effective to do so.SpyGlass DFT and SpyGlass DFT DSM tools provide an added boost to the capabilities in Mediatek's advanced design flow. It allows them to improve the testability of their designs at the beginning of the design flow for both stuck-at and transition fault analysis. The tool helps identify design rule violations and reports untestable faults, prior to implementation, allowing the team to make quick design changes while giving them more confidence in their RTL quality and project schedule."Atrenta prides itself in working with great electronics companies around the world, like Mediatek, and helping them find design problems early in the workflow, where it is easier and more cost effective to fix," said Piyush Sancheti, vice president of marketing at Atrenta. "Our DFT technology is a key component of RTL Signoff and our entire SpyGlass platform is dedicated to this effort."

Today sees the release of two products from Lanner: The LEC-7388, an Open Pluggable Standard (OPS) compliant module; and the LEC-7388S, a digital signage industrial PC. Both the LEC-7388 and the LEC-7388S are 4K-ready, offering support for the Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) resolution via their unique hardware configurations.The LEC-7388 and the LEC-7388S are both powered by the Intel Haswell processors and the Intel HD Graphic 4600 GPU. They are designed to deliver performance and reliability for Ultra HD applications such as broadcast content playback, video surveillance and interactive whiteboard.While the LEC-7388S's hardware specifications include native support for 4K content delivery, the LEC-7388 aims to bring such support for other 4K compatible systems without compromising the demand for compact design and hardware performance.The Open Pluggable Standard on which the LEC-7388 is based offers three major benefits:- Speeding up the development and simplifying the deployment of interconnected devices- Drawing up a blueprint for designing compact and streamlined hardware- Future-proofing interoperability, upgradability and scalabilityBoth products support the fourth generation Intel Core i3/i5 CPU, the Intel QM87 chipset and the Intel AMT for remote management. The LEC-7388 offers two USB 3.0 ports and supports hardware-based 4K decoders on external HDMI output port whereas the LEC-7388S offers the same support on both external HDMI output port and DisplayPort. The LEC-7388S also features a swappable 2.5" HDD/SSD drive bay, DDR3L memory (max. 16GB), three USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports and a mini-PCIe slot with SIM card reader.4K-ready OPS-compliant digital signage module powered by the Intel Haswell processors4K-ready digital signage IPC powered by the Intel Haswell processorsIn terms of physical dimensions, the LEC-7388S measures at 220mm x 46mm x 172mm while the LEC-7388's smaller form factor measures at 200mm x 30mm x 118mm.You can contact a Lanner representative at contact@lannerinc.com for more information.About LannerLanner Electronics Inc (TAIEX 6245) is a world-leading provider of design, engineering and manufacturing services for advanced network appliances and rugged applied computing platforms. Founded in 1986, Lanner is an ISO 9001 accredited organization with headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan, and offices in the USA, Canada and China.Lanner is an associate member of the Intel Intelligent Systems Alliance, a group of companies committed to developing modular, standards-based solutions based on technologies, processors, products, and services from Intel.

In August 2014, IPC & Embedded Expo 2014 will be held in Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu. As the only large-sized technical exhibition focused on the IPC and embedded fields in China, IPC & Embedded Expo will be working with leading global enterprises - such as Advantech, Artesyn, Congatec, Comstar, EVOC, Jetway, LEXSystem, Norco, Apacer, ADI, Freescale, Fujitsu, Microchip, Renesas, ST, TI, Xilinx and so on - to fully exhibit a variety of embedded technologies including X86, ARM, MIPS, ASIC, FPGA and GPU, etc. as well as their innovative applications in various vertical industries in order to meet the increasingly diversified requirements for specialization in different industries.Registration for the event is open to press and guests seeking the latest intelligence on IPC and embedded tech. During the exhibition, seminars themed on hot topics such as medical electronics, smart home, motor control, smart metering and industrial communication will be held. Senior experts engaged in the fields of automation, network communication, security/monitoring, medical electronics, automotive electronics, digital signage, railway transportation, smarter city, Internet of Things (IoT) will be invited to provide their professional interpretation on how embedded technology can meet diverse specialization requirements for various industries, and lead the industries into an intelligentization revolution.Frank Yuan, CEO of Comstar Technology, commented: "Participating in the IPC & Embedded Expo had positive effects on our brand promotion. We wish the expo would have a larger scale in the future."Wang Xiaohua, Project Manager of Midea Group, commented: "The Internet of Things is the development trend of future products and will have hundreds of billions of industry scale in the future. After participating in the expo, I learned something new, met many new suppliers and got new ideas about the development of our subsequent products. I hope the expo will continue and grow more and more successful."IPC & Embedded Expo 2013 ReviewIPC & Embedded Expo 2013 was held in Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center from August 1 to 3, with total area of 11,000 square meters. The IPC & Embedded Expo 2013 attracted more than 146 exhibitors, about 60 media establishments at home and abroad reported the event, and over 12,000 professionals visited the tradeshow during the three days.Photo: Company