Apotop, a provider of memory, storage, and mobile products and accessories, will showcase its newest line of wireless storage products for mobile devices, a line of Thunderbolt products, including external SSDs and docking stations, Apple peripherals and memory products at COMPUTEX Taipei 2013. Apotop invites all attendees to visit their booth (# I0802 Nangang Exhibition Hall 1F) and get a hands-on experience with the latest product offerings. Thunderbolt ConnectivityAt Apotop's booth, visitors can take a look at Apotop's developing Thunderbolt line, which includes docking stations and external SSDs. The docking stations have HDMI, USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt connections which to other devices such as printers, monitors, stereos and other storage device for fast data transfer.Wireless Storage DevicesApotop will be displaying the Wireless Storage Device Series, including the DW21 Wi-Copy which is the only portable product on the market that can transfer data from SD cards and USB flash drives right to Android and iOS devices as well as directly copy data between the SD card and USB flash drive. Besides being a wireless card reader, Wi-Copy also integrates the functions of a Wi-Fi router and power bank. More new feature rich additions to the Wireless Storage Device Series will also be shown.MacBook Storage PeripheralsThe MacBook Storage Peripherals Series includes two products that cost effectively enhance the storage capacity of SSD equipped MacBooks, AP-U2 and SmartSuit. The AP-U2 is a mini-external drive of 32GB that sits flush in the USB port of the MacBook Air. The SmartSuit is a thin sleeve that can be easily slid into the SD card slot of a MacBook. - upgrading the internal storage.Memory/Storage DevicesApotop's memory products include a variety of flash memory devices such as SSDs, USB flash drives, SD/microSD cards and DRAM modules.For more information about Apotop, please visit: http://www.carry.com.tw/About ApotopFounded in 2011 as a brand of the experienced technology manufacturer, Carry Co. Ltd., Apotop provides the most reliable storage, memory and Wi-Fi products on the market and creates smartphone and tablet accessories that enhance creativity and productivity. Apotop's goal is for complete customer satisfaction. To achieve this Apotop focuses on creating value through reliability and integrity with its products and services. Learn more about Apotop here: http://www.apotop.com.tw/Contact:(+886-2) 8221-3985(+886-2) 8221-3985 FREE ext 16430jade_hsieh@carry.com.tw
GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, has launched its latest G1-Killer motherboards supporting the latest Intel 4th generation Core processors. Packed with absolutely everything you'll need to build an uncompromising, high-performance gaming PC, the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 5 and GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M5 debut a range of exciting features including GIGABYTE Amp-Up Audio, several advanced audio technologies for serious gamers and audiophiles, including the world's first onboard OP-Amp socket."These new GIGABYTE G1-Killer motherboards really demonstrate how GIGABYTE is expanding the DIY ethos to even the silicon level of your motherboard," commented Henry Kao, Vice President of GIGABYTE Motherboard Business Unit. "Not only is this the first time that users can enjoy the superior audio quality provided by an Op Amp, but they can also experiment with different Op Amps to explore personal audio preferences."GIGABYTE Amp-Up AudioGIGABYTE Amp-Up Audio is a range of industry-leading features and technologies that set the GIGABYTE G1-Killer motherboard series apart from the crowd. Amp-Up Audio includes a discrete high-end audio processor from Creative plus a comprehensive audio software suit, an onboard OP AMP, audio noise guard, front panel headphone amplifier and gold plated hardware.Exclusive Upgradable OP AMPGIGABYTE G1-Killer motherboards are the world's first to feature an onboard OP-Amp socket, allowing enthusiasts to swap out the motherboard's onboard operational amplifier (Op Amp) using a range of nuanced OP Amps available on the market.GIGABYTE G1-Killer motherboards include an amplifier upgrade kit that includes a pair of specialized Operational Amplifiers and an IC Extractor for easy installation. Additional amplifiers can be purchased separately to further expand audio capabilities.Creative Sound Core3DGIGABYTE 8 Series G1-Killer motherboards feature a dedicated Sound Core3D audio processor from Creative, a multi-core sound and voice processor offering high-performance hardware audio processing, with leading-edge audio technologies including the latest SoundBlaster software suite.SoundBlaster with SBX ProStudioThe Creative Sound Core3D takes advantage of the SoundBlaster software suite - a powerful audio platform equipped with cutting-edge audio technology including SBX Pro Studio, Scout Mode, EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0, Creative ALchemy, VoiceFX and SBX Surround audio processing features.Nichicon Pro Audio CapsGIGABYTE 8 Series G1-Killer motherboards use the highest quality NichiconMUSE ES series and MW series Bi-Polarized audio capacitors at each channel layout. These professional audio capacitors deliver the highest quality sound resolution and sound expansion to create the most realistic sound effects for professional gamers.Gaming Headphone Amplifier GIGABYTE 8 Series motherboards feature a high capacity headphone amplifier which is able to drive 600Ω loads, allowing gamers to enjoy a fuller range of dynamic sound with crisper details and less distortion when using high quality professional headphones. Featuring a wide bandwidth, low noise, high slew rate and low distortion, GIGABYE 8 series motherboards are ideal for professional audio usage and gaming enthusiasts.Gold Audio Plated HardwareGIGABYTE G1-Killer motherboards pack top quality gold plated audio, HDMI and DisplayPort connectors for improved connectivity and long lasting durability. Gold has superb signal conductivity and will not tarnish over extended periods of use. The Creative Sound Core3D processor is also shielded by a gold-plated cover which eliminates electrostatic interference.Audio Noise GuardTo help protect and insulate the high fidelity Creative Sound Core3DTM audio processor and onboard amplifiers from electrostatic interference (ESD), GIGABYTE G1-Killer motherboards feature an audio noise guard that essentially separates the board's sensitive analog audio components from potential ESD pollution at the PCB level. LED trace path lighting illuminates to show the separation of the PCB layers.Extreme Multi-GPU ConfigurationsFeaturing the latest PCIe Gen 3.0 support, the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 5 motherboard is built to handle up to 4 discrete graphics cards, delivering the absolute maximum frame rates at the very highest screen resolutions. The GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 5 supports both 4-Way CrossfireTM X and 4-Way SLI, allowing gamers to see more clearly, aim better, and experience immersive 3D games more realistically than ever before.GIGABYTE Dual LANThe G1.Sniper 5 features dual networking with two industry-leading Ethernet LAN solutions from Qualcomm and Intel available on the back panel. Dual LAN means that serious gamers have more options and control during gaming competitions. The Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2200 features Advanced Stream Detect technology which identifies and prioritizes all network traffic, while the Killer Network Manager allows custom prioritization for all network applications. Intel Gigabit LAN also supports network teaming for blisteringly fast, aggregated network bandwidth.Dual Silent Fan/Water Thermal DesignThe GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 5 motherboard features an extreme heatsink design for the PWM area that allows users to employ both passive, active and water cooling setups. A stylish hollow body heatsink fitted with a silent integrated fan ensures superb heat dissipation during extreme performance and overclocked PC gaming configurations.Water Cooling-ReadyTube connectors at each end of the heatsink provide easy integration with any water cooled system. These technologies help combat high temperatures by effectively removing heat from critical areas of the motherboard such as the CPU VRM zone, allowing it to remain cool, even when the battle heats up.GIGABYTE Advanced Fan ControlThe GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 5 motherboard provides 9 strategically placed onboard system fan connectors, including a CPU OPT fan that can be connected to a water pump and configured for continuous full speed operation. The new GIGABYTE EasyTune app also offers comprehensive system fan controls with individual airflow settings provided by a dedicated digital controller.Exclusive GIGABYTE 8 Series TechnologiesGIGABYTE Ultra Durable 5 PlusGIGABYTE Ultra Durable 5 Plus debuts on GIGABYTE 8 series motherboards, building on previous generations of Ultra Durable design philosophy with a range of features and component choices that provide record-breaking performance, cool and efficient operation and extended motherboard lifespan.All IR® Digital CPU Power DesignGIGABYTE Ultra Durable 5 Plus motherboards use industry-leading PWM controllers and PowIRstage ICs and from International Recifier. These components are 100% digital, offering incredible precision in delivering power to your 4th Generation Intel processor. Designed from the ground up to complement each other, these industry-leading PWM controllers and PowIRstage ICs from IR are optimized for cool and efficient operation, allowing users to get the absolute maximum performance from their next PC build.Durable Black Solid CapacitorsGIGABYTE 8 Series motherboards integrate the absolute best quality solid state capacitors that are rated to perform at maximum efficiency for extended periods, even in extreme performance configurations. This provides peace of mind for end users who want to push their system hard, yet demand absolute reliability and stability. With ultra-low ESR no matter how high the CPU loading, these exclusive capacitors also come in customized jet black, exclusively on GIGABYTE 8 series motherboards.High ESD Protection for USB and LANGIGABYTE 8 series motherboards raise the bar in terms of protecting your system, providing advanced electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection for both your Ethernet LAN and USB ports, both common sources of ESD-related failures. Each LAN and USB port is paired with a dedicated protection filter that can withstand high electrostatic discharges, protecting your system from common electrical surges and even direct lighting strikes.15µ Gold Plated CPU SocketGIGABYTE 8 Series motherboards come equipped with a 15µ gold plated CPU socket, which means that enthusiasts can enjoy absolute reliability and longevity for the CPU socket overtime, without having any concerns about corroded pins and bad contacts.New GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOS with Dashboard ModeTake control of how your BIOS looks and feels with the new GIGABYTE BIOS app, a fully customizable tuning utility that allows you to adjust overclocking and performance settings in real-time. With smooth mouse control and shortcuts for fast navigation, the new and exclusive Dashboard Mode gives users complete access to all data related to your motherboard, including CPU, graphics and memory clocks, temperatures and voltages.The new GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOS is also presented in GIGABYTE's signature green gaming colorScheme, so the heat of battle never feels too far away, even when adjusting your BIOS settings. Users can also use their own background image for a uniquely customized BIOS interface.New GIGABYTE App CenterGIGABYTE App Center gives you easy access to a wealth of GIGABYTE apps that help you get the most from your GIGABYTE motherboard. Using a simple, unified user interface, GIGABYTE App Center allows you to launch all GIGABYTE apps installed on your system. The GIGABYTE App Center is also customizable with three attractive color schemes.The GIGABYTE App Center Includes:- EasyTune- @BIOS- EZ Setup- Live Updates- USB Blocker- On/Off Charge 2- Smart Recovery- Smart TimeLockNew GIGABYTE EasyTuneA revised and updated GIGABYTE EasyTune offers a simple and easy-to-use interface that allows users to fine-tune their system settings, adjust system and memory clocks and voltages in a Windows environment with comprehensive system-related information displayed without the need to install additional software.GIGABYTE On/Off Charge 2GIGABYTE On/Off Charge technology is revised and upgraded on GIGABYTE 8 series motherboards, with comprehensive and enhanced charging support for a broad range of devices that include those that run both iOS and Android. Users can enjoy fast AC charging over USB on mobile devices, even when the PC is turned off.GIGABYTE 8 Series G1-Killer Models*G1.Sinper 5 motherboard (ETX)G1.Sniper M5 motherboard (Micro-ATX)To learn more about GIGABYTE 8 Series G1-Killer motherboards, please go to: http://www.gigabyte.com/MicroSite/335/gaming.html*Features may vary modelAbout GIGABYTEGIGABYTE, headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, is known as a global leading brand in the IT industry, with employees and business channels in almost every country. Founded in 1986, GIGABYTE started as a research and development team and has since taken the lead in the world's motherboard and graphics card markets. On top of Motherboards and Graphics cards, GIGABYTE further expanded its product portfolio to include PC Components, PC Peripherals, Laptops, Desktop PCs, Network Communications, Servers and Mobile Phones to serve each facet of the digital life in the home and office. Everyday GIGABYTE aims to "Upgrade Your Life" with innovative technology, exceptional quality, and unmatched customer service. Visit http://www.gigabyte.com/ for more information.
Taipei, Taiwan, June 4, 2013 - Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server, storage technology and green computing is exhibiting its latest energy efficient server and storage solutions this week at Computex, Taiwan. The showcase will focus on maximizing performance per watt, per square foot with innovations in power saving and cooling architectures, increased compute and storage density and the widest selection of application optimized server/storage solutions. Taiwan is also the location of Supermicro's new state-of-the-art integration and logistics facility which provides customers in Asia and worldwide a time-to-market advantage with accelerated fulfillment, support and service for high-volume demands."With energy costs and environmental impact rising worldwide, Data Centers and Cloud service providers deserve the best server and storage architectures that offer greatest savings in terms of performance per watt, per dollar, per square foot," said Charles Liang, President and CEO of Supermicro. "Our new power saving FatTwin delivers on all fronts with up to 16% better energy efficiency and $500 per node savings over the life of the system. Alongside our higher density 3U MicroCloud supporting twenty-four Intel Xeon hot-swap nodes and expanding range of energy efficient server and storage solutions, Supermicro is leading the industry with server-building block solutions that save energy, cost and in the long run, our one and only Mother Earth."FatTwin headlines the show with the $500 savings per node system featuring superior architecture, high efficiency power supplies and an advanced thermal solution. The 4U, 4-node FatTwin, with each hot-swappable node supporting 8x 3.5" hot-swap HDDs per 1U, offers the industry's highest I/O performance and storage capacity. The 4U 4x hot-swap node HPC FatTwin features 3x GPU/MIC per node for an unrivaled 12x GPU/MIC in 4U. The new high-density, power-efficient 3U 8-node MicroCloud supporting high performance Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 family or new Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1200 V3 family will also be on display with a higher density 12x hot-swap node for the new processors available.Exhibits also include the new 4U high-density SuperStorage featuring 72x 3.5" external hot-swap HDDs, HPC optimized GPU/MIC server solutions, new high performance workstations, SuperBlade® for the Enterprise and Embedded building block solutions. Over 50 single, dual and quad processor motherboards to match any specific application will also be on display. At the show, Supermicro will launch a new line of X10 servers, workstations and motherboards (www.supermicro.com/X10) based on Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1200 V3 and 4th Generation Intel® CoreTM processor families, a new Intel microarchitecture with 22nm process technology. Additional product highlights include 10/1GbE networking solutions, Battery Backup Power (BBP®) modules, SuperRack® and Supermicro's System Management Software Suite for complete integrated solutions."With each new generation of processors Intel delivers new features and more performance while increasing the energy efficiency. Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1200 V3 based on new Haswell microarchitecture and 22nm manufacturing process embodies this commitment," said Lisa Graff, Vice President and General Manager, Datacenter Marketing Group at Intel. "Supermicro is one of the leading companies to take advantage of these new technologies and delivers innovative designs from X10 motherboards to their new 3U 12- and 8-node MicroCloud servers."Supermicro Exhibit Highlights at Computex:- 4U FatTwin™* Power Saving - 8x hot-swap nodes, Front I/O ( SYS-F617R3-FT ) system featuring 16% lower power consumption with a superior shared cooling and power resource architecture with redundant Platinum Level high efficiency (94%+) power supplies providing an advanced thermal optimized solution* GPU/MIC for HPC - 4x hot-plug nodes, Front I/O ( SYS-F627G3-FT+ ) 12x GPU/MIC (3x per node) * Hadoop Big/Data - 4x hot-plug nodes, Front I/O ( SYS-F617H6-FT+ ) 12x Fixed 3.5" HDDs plus optional 2x Fixed 2.5" HDDs- 3U 12-node MicroCloud ( SYS-5038ML-H12TRF ) featuring 12 independent hot-swappable nodes, each supporting Intel® Xeon® E3-1200 V3 13W-80W CPUs, 32GB memory, 2x 3.5" or optional 4x 2.5" HDDs and MicroLP expansion- 4U high-density Double-Sided Storage® ( SSG-6047R-E1R72L ) 72x 3.5" external hot-swap HDDs with 2x internal (optional 2x external) 2.5" fixed HDDs- New line of X10 servers, workstations and motherboards ( http://www.supermicro.com/X10) supporting Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1200 V3 and 4th Generation Intel® Core™ processor family featuring 13W-84W CPU support for low power to high performance options- UP (uni-processor) motherboard highlights: High-Performance X10SL7-F , Essential X10SLH-F , Value Oriented X10SLM-F , Workstation C7Z87-OCE , Embedded X10-SLQ and X9SBAA-F - DP (dual-processor) motherboard highlights: Industry's only 11x PCI-E X9DRX+-F , Data Center Optimized X9DRD-LF , Expansion Oriented X9DRW-7TPF+ with LSI 2208 and dual 10G SFP+, Cost-Optimized X9DRL-7F ATX with LSI 2208 and 1U support for 115W CPUs and socket B2 X9DB3-TPF with single port 10G SFP+- 4U MP SuperServer® for Enterprise ( SYS-8047R-7JRFT ) supporting quad Intel® Xeon® processor E5-4600 series, up to 768GB DDR3 1600MHz ECC memory in 24x DIMMs, 8x PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots, 24x 3.5" hot-swap HDDs, 2x 10GbE LAN ports, 10x USB 2.0- 7U SuperBlade® Solutions - The all-in-one SuperBlade features 94%+ power efficiency and high bandwidth connectivity through optional network switch modules , including 56Gb/s FDR IB (SBM-IBS-F3616M), FCoE (SBM-XEM-F8X4SM), 10GbE (SBM-XEM-X10SM) and 1/10GbE (SBM-GEM-X3S+)* Dual-node DP TwinBlade® ( SBI-7227R-T2 and SBA-7222G-T2 ) offering the highest compute density with up to 120 dual-processor servers per 42U SuperRack® achieving an unrivaled 0.35U per DP node* 64-core AMD G34 4-way MP Blade ( SBA-7142G-T4 )* 3 TFlops GPU Blade ( SBI-7127RG )* 9.6TB Storage Blade with HW RAID & BBU ( SBI-7127R-S6 )* PCI-E 3.0 x16 Expansion Workstation Blade ( SBI-7127R-SH )- Battery Backup Power ( BBP® ) enabled SuperServer® ( SYS-1027R-72BRFTP ) features redundant PWS-206B-1R modules (54.5W x 220D x 40H mm) and provides BBP® protection in 200W/5min and 100W/15min options.- High bandwidth 10-Gigabit Ethernet top-of-rack switches: 24-port SSE-X24S and new 48-port SSE-X3348T/TR 10GBASE-T switch. Plus the popular and versatile 52-port SSE-G2252P with Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) capability.- Supermicro's System Management Software Suite provides sophisticated power management ( NMView ) down to clusters, servers or processors, system health monitoring (SSM) and additional out-of-band management utilities ( smcibu ) that provide batch BIOS updates without interrupting application performance.- Hyper-Speed SuperWorkstation ( SYS-7047AX-TRF ) and GPU/MIC enabled HPC SuperServers ( SYS-2027GR-TRF , SYS-7047GR-TRF )- Embedded (7 years product life) solutions including new high performance ( X10SLQ , X10SLH-F ) motherboards and compact server building blocks ( SYS-1017A-MP , SYS-5017A-EF , CSE-505-203B ) ideal for ATM, Kiosk, NVR/DVR, surveillance appliances M2M, network and storage applications- A+ AMD Solutions with single, dual and quad CPU motherboards featuring all new AM3+ and G34 Opteron™ processors and LSI 2208 SAS2 6Gb/s support. 3U 12-node MicroCloud ( AS-3012MA-H12TRF ), 2U Twin 2 ( AS-2122TG-H6IBQRF ), 4U/Tower ( AS-4022G-6F ), 1U short-depth ( AS-1012A-MRF ) server and 1U ( AS-1042G-TF ), 2U ( AS-2042G-72RF4 ) and 4U/Tower ( AS-4042G-72RF4 ) quad processor servers supporting up to 1TB DDR3 1600MHz memory in 32x DIMM slots.Visit Supermicro at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan June 4th through the 8th at the Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC) Nangang Exhibition Hall, Booth #M0820 (4th Floor) or browse Supermicro's total line of high performance, high-efficiency server and storage solutions at http://www.supermicro.com/.Follow Supermicro on Facebook and Twitter to receive their latest news and announcements.About Super Micro Computer, Inc.Supermicro® (NASDAQ: SMCI), the leading innovator in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology is a premier provider of advanced server Building Block Solutions® for Data Center, Cloud Computing, Enterprise IT, Hadoop/Big Data, HPC and Embedded Systems worldwide. Supermicro is committed to protecting the environment through its "We Keep IT Green®" initiative and provides customers with the most energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly solutions available on the market.Supermicro, FatTwin, SuperServer, Building Block Solutions, BBP and We Keep IT Green are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Super Micro Computer, Inc.All other brands, names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.Media Contact:David OkadaSuper Micro Computer, Inc.davido@supermicro.com
To innovate and to develop revolutionary features are becoming a prevalent development strategy for ICT product manufacturers. While stylish appearance, state-of-the-art design as well as user friendly and habit changing functionalities are the current development trend, we must not overlook two critical factors to ensure product success in the market, namely, safety of use and impacts of the product on the environment.In recent years, safety and environmental protection has become a topic of great concern for consumers which has in turn captured the attention of governments. Many, in particular regions of high economic growth such as India, South Korea and South America, have legislated mandatory regulations for safety and environmental performance of imported products. Taking India as an example, which is one of the BRIC markets and boasts a population of close to 1.2 billion, there is an enormous demand for consumer goods. It is a market vied by electronic product manufacturers around the world.The Indian government, in order to protect the health and safety of consumers, has proposed to introduce a mandatory registration scheme requiring third-party safety certifications for imported goods involving 13 categories of high tech products including televisions, printers, scanners and microwave ovens, as well as two categories of household electric appliances. The new scheme will take effect on July 3, 2013. Other national mandatory certifications include the KC mark in South Korea, the UL-AR S mark in Argentina and the UL BR INMETRO in Brazil.From an environmental and sustainability perspective, the concern should not be limited to whether the materials used in a product are harmful to the environment. The release of hazardous substances during the use of a product should not be neglected as well. The multidimensional environmental performance standard - Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) - launched in the United States is a tool to evaluate the impact on the environment throughout the whole life cycle of a certified product such as a television, printer, photocopying machine and imaging equipment. In fact, a number of green certifications pertaining to different professional fields have been developed, such as indoor air quality and IEEE 1680 environmental testing. To pursue a long term future, high tech manufacturers should stay on top of environmental certifications worldwide for the development of appropriate sustainability strategies. The key for a product to stay competitive in future lies in acquiring widely recognized international standards, which will not only win the trusts of consumers but also raise the corporate image.In view of the rapid development in technology, product safety standards also need to advance and adjust with the times. UL pioneered the development of the world's first safety standard for modular data centers - UL Subject 2755 Outline of investigation (OOI). The subject not only covers the installation of servers in a modular data center, but also addresses to the safety of power distribution, cooling systems and smoke/fire protection systems. The subject is currently going through a number of processes with a view to be developed into an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard and to be included in the relevant IEC Standard. Manufacturers in Taiwan that export chiefly to the US market should pay close attention to the development of the new standard and act accordingly.The above covers major topics being discussed in the industry including global safety certification for high-tech products, environmental and sustainability verification, and lately certification for Modular Data Centers. At Computex 2013, UL will host free seminars in which subject experts will investigate these topics. For more information, visit www.ul.com/taiwan.
Always present as one of the main exhibitors at Computex, Gigabyte is happy to invite all its customers and partners to visit its showcase and discover its lineup of cutting-edge computer products at Computex 2013.Gigabyte has its booth at the Exhibition Hall 1 of the Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC), section D002. Highlights of its showcase of professional products include:GS-R22PHL: Supercomputing module supporting 8x GPU/MIC cardsDesigned for computing accelerators such as the Intel Xeon Phi and Nvidia Tesla product lines, this 2U rack offers the ability to receive up to eight double-slot GPU/MIC cards when other similar 2U racks on the market can receive up to six cards at best. This system is able to offer vast gains in processing time for the most supercomputing intensive applications, from cutting-edge rendering farms to the latest simulations in leading scientific research.Future Intel Xeon E3-1200 V3 family-based server and workstation motherboardsGigabyte's new models of single socket server/workstation motherboards are designed for the future Intel Xeon processor E3-1200 V3 product family (former codename Haswell). Suitable for both rack and desktop tower integration, Gigabyte's ultra-flexible products feature the latest technologies (including new-generation LAN controllers) made to deliver the benefits and new features of this future CPU line. Bringing dual socket to the ATX form factorTo complement its lineup of dual socket motherboards produced in large form factors, Gigabyte has introduced a new model bringing the same platform to the ATX form factor. Designed for servers or workstations dedicated to a main application that can scale over a large number of computing cores, this new motherboard is based on the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family.GS-A22C0: A hardware rampart for network applicationsThis high performance relay system is a turnkey 2U rack solution designed as a hardware gateway between a computing infrastructure and the outside network it is connected to. Based on the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family and including special purpose relay chips, it is able to protect a local network from external attacks and to provide better network loadings management for the critical operations being protected. Thanks to its ability to receive up to eight of Gigabyte's various hot-swappable LAN card options, the GS-A22C0 is also a flexible solution with which a network deployment can be expanded or reduced to fulfill the current operating needs of the infrastructure.10GbE connectivity for allAs the era of virtualization keeps unfolding, cost-efficient and high-performance networking solutions are ever more critical to support the specific bandwidth and traffic features required by its particular types of applications. In that context, Gigabyte is showcasing its new GC-MLBZB 10GbE add-on card that has been designed according to the Open Compute Project guidance. Based on Broadcom's BCM57811 dual-port 10GbE controller, this card delivers the latest baseline functionalities boosting storage and networking performance, ultra-low power consumption, and one of the fastest input/output per second (IOPS) capability in a compact footprint.The DIY Windows 8 AIOFollowing the debut of the Thin Mini-ITX form factor, Gigabyte has introduced its latest 21.5-inch all-in-one (AIO) PC based on this standard. Gigabyte has built this model with innovative design features for an easy and quick access to the internal components. It combines the future fourth- generation Intel Core processors with Intel 8 series chipset, special doors to access and replace the HDD and the RAM, and an edge-to-edge Windows 8-ready touchscreen secured by a glass frame.The BRIX ultra compact PC kitThe BRIX from Gigabyte is an ultra compact (29.9 x 107.6 x 114.4mm) and versatile DIY PC kit available with a broad choice of processors covering a range of performance and price points. It is a desktop PC with a form factor that sits in the palm of your hand. It can serve as a compact HTPC, a standard desktop in the home or office, or in commercial applications such as digital signage.Media ContactYann GerardiTel: +886-2-89124000, ext.1227No.6, Bao Chiang Road, Hsin-Tien Dist., New Taipei City 231, Taiwanyann.g@gigabyte.comAbout GigabyteGigabyte Technology, headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, is known as a leading brand in the IT industry with branch offices located in 24 countries around the world. Founded in 1986, Gigabyte started as a small research and development team and has since taken a position as one of the world's top motherboard manufacturers. In addition to motherboards and graphics cards, Gigbayte further expanded its product portfolio to include notebook and desktop PCs, servers and datacenter equipment, networking products, mobile handsets, and home entertainment devices. Visit b2b.gigabyte.com for more information.
Just like Netflix or YouTube can be streamed to any screen, there exists the promise of amazing quality cloud gaming that can be played on a mobile phone, tablet or TV regardless of the hardware specs of the client device, and NVIDIA is currently doing its best to make this opportunity a reality. The company believes that uploading high-end PC games onto a GRID server and then streaming the games as video to various devices is the wave of the future, and it is making the related investments that will not only allow it to capitalize on this trend, but also make it one of the main drivers of the market moving forward. The NVIDIA GRID opportunity For NVIDIA, the opportunity is simply the evolution and natural progression of online gaming. Looking back at the industry's history, from the very first one-on-one games that pitted one PC user against another, to the development of hosted gaming on local area networks or the Internet, the structure has basically been the same. While each user would be connected to a game server in the cloud in order to download a copy of the game and keep track of the relevant positions of the other players, the rendering of the game itself has been and continues to remain on the client device. So up to this point, when it comes to gaming, the most important aspect is the hardware device that you are playing on. NVIDIA sees this changing and in its vision all the rendering will be done on the server. The game progress would then be encoded into video and streamed to a client device, much like Netflix streams movies to its customers. The advantages of this method are many, and include the fact that users will be able to play high-end PC games on devices such as tablets, smartTVs and smartphones and that users can start playing on one device, pause and continue playing on another device right from where they left off. According to Phil Eisler, General Manager, NVIDIA GRID Cloud Gaming, this natural progression fits in with the evolution of cloud computing in general. Eisler explained that when users first started utilizing the cloud, the first thing that went to the cloud was data, which basically meant users put their hard drives in the cloud. Then CPUs started moving to cloud to process the data, and now what the market is seeing is a desire to move GPUs to the cloud in order to render the data and then have it streamed back to any client device. Aside from being able to play games on any device, users will also be able to play games from any location. Systems like Xbox limit users to only one location but imagine opening a web browser on any device and having access to all your video games just like you can do for YouTube videos or Netflix movies today, said Eisler. NVIDIA views this as Cloud 3.0. Looking at the TAM There are no doubts that the computing trend is increasingly being driven by a desire for mobility and access to information from cloud-based services on all different types of devices, so there are definitely opportunities for cloud-based gaming. But just how big of an opportunity is it? According to Eisler, the global broadband market is on trajectory to soon have a billion households that have bandwidth of 10Mbit or faster, which means the streaming of Full HD video into homes is becoming commonplace. NVIDIA and its partners have already started implementing trials to offer cloud gaming to broadband customers. Currently there are 15 trials undergoing across North America, Europe, and Asia, with the data indicating that there is around a 10% connect rate for users accessing streaming games. Using that percentage and expanding it to the current 700 million households globally that have the bandwidth to support the service, and considering an average price of about US$120 a year for games, this translates into about US$10 billion a year in revenues for cloud gaming services. Eisler noted that the server portion that is allocated to this total is about 25% or US$2.5 billion while the GPU unit portion is about a US$1 billion market. NVIDIA believes it will take about five years for the market to grow to that size, but it is confident that the market will succeed. Addressing the challenges: Scaling and latency NVIDIA is currently offering two boards to address the market. Its GRID K520 model has two GPUs and allows for the streaming of up to 12 games. Its latest visual computing appliance is the GRID K340, which has four Kepler GPUs, and allows users to stream up to 24 concurrent gaming sessions from one board. NVIDIA also offer the GRID software development kit for Windows and Linux that helps reduce latency and includes access to its hardware encoder in order to encode multiple game streams. NVIDIA is also working on a technology called the virtual GPU (GRID VGX), which allows the GPU to be divided into one, two, three or four virtual GPUs, which is a key development for the scaling of cloud gaming systems. Eisler explained that a total of 3 GRID K340 boards with 4 GPUs each can be installed into one server that yields a total of 12 physical GPUs in a single system. When used with the NVIDIA GRID VGX software, the GPU can be divided virtually into 4, so that you can run up to 48 concurrent game streams from a single server, giving service providers new economies of scale. In terms of latency enhancement, a lot of early cloud gaming systems use software encoding, but NVIDIA has developed its GRID server to have an improvement of 30 milliseconds on average due to the company's hardware capture and encoding capability. This means that when playing a game via GRID cloud computing users have a similar experience to playing from a local game console. Battery life is also a consideration. With most client devices increasingly being mobile devices and thus battery powered, a major benefit of shifting GPU processing to the cloud is that the power is being transferred from the client to the server room. This way battery life can be extended on battery-powered devices, and they can be designed to be thinner, lighter and cooler. Furthermore games take up a lot of memory space on mobile devices with limited storage. With Cloud Gaming, all of your games are maintained on cloud servers and your gaming device only needs to install a small game streaming client that can access 100's of games in the cloud. Building an ecosystem NVIDIA cannot develop this new industry alone and the company is sharing its vision with players throughout the supply chain to build an ecosystem. In terms of hardware, NVIDIA is working with a number of OEM/ODM partners such as SuperMicro, Asustek Computer and Quanta to make servers for GRID cloud gaming. NVIDIA is also working with a number of middleware partners who create the system software to allow users to select games and log in. These cloud gaming middleware companies include Agawi in the USA, Playcast in Israel, G-Cluster in Japan, Cloud Union in China and Ubitus of Taiwan. There are about 10 operating cloud gaming services available in the world that are based on NVIDIA GPUs and operated by broadband providers, such as SFR, Orange and Bouygues in France and LGU+ and SK Planet in Korea that offer the ability to stream games through a cable set top box (STB) to your TV. On the client side, pretty much all that is needed is a device that has a H.264 decoder, meaning wherever Netflix and YouTube can go, cloud gaming can go as well. But is NVIDIA the main company driving this market? Eisler says that it is a combination of NVIDIA and its middleware partners. He also thinks broadband service providers that offer video on demand, such as SK Telecom, are becoming increasingly more interested in adding services to their broadband menu in order to drive up revenue per user. Gaming is a potential service they feel strongly about. Game developers The development of cloud gaming could also affect how games are developed in the future. In the past, a lot of focus was spent on looking at the hardware specs of the client devices. With gaming devices becoming diversified it has become increasingly difficult for developers to reach customers who use different devices such as a Mac, PC, Android, etc. Developers therefore have been interested in tapping the cloud gaming market to reach any user, no matter the device. There are already startups that have begun developing solely with the focus of doing cloud-based gaming and NVIDIA expects that major developers will follow as the market matures. In fact, Eisler believes that this is a major benefit for developers, since they won't have to worry about the multiple types of hardware being used for their games. Also, as Smart TVs become more popular, users will be able to play high-end games on their TV by simply downloading an App. NVIDIA currently has about 200 people that work with game developers on a daily basis to enhance their games for Nvidia GeForce technology as well as optimizing for GRID cloud gaming. The company is also working with innovative game developers who are looking for ways to differentiate their cloud games and reach new customers. Eisler noted that NVIDIA is seeing interest from online free-to-play game developers and some game distributors. Ultimately it will be users who benefit, as they continue to see an improvement in quality and are able to easily and quickly access games that would ordinarily require a large initial investment in hardware. In addition, new types of hardware will be introduced to access cloud gaming. NVIDIA has introduced SHIELD, a portable console that can take advantage of accessing GPU processing over a network. SHIELD runs on the open Android platform and it is a perfect client for cloud game streaming. It has integrated game pad functionality so users have better controls for game playing and NVIDIA has implemented some technology into the device to optimize its ability to handle the decompression of streamed video to enhance the experience of playing games in a wireless network. NVIDIA is also a supporter of the "OUYA" device, a US$99 gaming console powered by Android that is able to connect to TVs. Not only gamers to benefit from GPUs in the cloud In addition to cloud gaming, NVIDIA believes that putting GPUs in data centers and having them run applications will also benefit business customers. Creating servers that allow customers to run their desktops in multiple locations will allow them to have more flexibility, Eisler pointed out. For example, you can open up a document on your tablet and show customer information that is running on a server back in the office. This type of implementation is also secure because the user is just streaming video at one point and time. Eisler indicated that NVIDIA has even received interest from car developers who are looking to allow customers to pre-order the type of car they want and take it on a virtual test drive. These systems can access a car design database, render a photorealistic 3D image in the cloud and then stream it to any dealership. Eisler argues that GPU in the cloud would also increase the adoption of Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) in businesses. Virtual desktops have been touted by platform providers like Citrix as well as customers such as banks, insurance companies and military contractors, who already see the security and any-device benefits of virtualization. However, the adoption rate of VDI has thus far been quite slow. According to Eisler, the key issue is that few people live in a world where it is only text that needs to be accessed virtually. Most business applications make heavy use of multimedia and it is this issue that creates lag, since all of the graphics are being rendered on the CPU. There has been strong resistance among end users for VDI as a result. The benefit of moving GPUs into VDI servers is that you can give them full performance virtual desktops with full multimedia integration of 3D graphics and video. This creates a "no-compromise" type of virtual desktop which will enable IT managers to deploy VDI without a user revolt. This has been welcomed from many IT departments in all sorts of businesses, stated Eisler. Photo: Company
Seismic shifts in the PC market have posed harsh challenges to the supply chain, of which independent BIOS vendors (IBVs) are a key part. Pai-Lin Huang, director of the Strategic Marketing Department at American Megatrends (AMI), indicated that AMI is the only IBV in the market that is able to provide comprehensive support for the full range of computing architectures, as well as products that cover all sectors of the computing industry, from enterprise to consumer-level solutions. In addition to its Aptio UEFI BIOS firmware, AMI's core technologies also cover mobile and pre-boot applications, network storage solutions, server and remote management, and more. AMI has also recently extended its support to platforms based on ARM architecture in an effort to respond to future market shifts and rapidly evolving end-user needs.Computex 2013 provides a showcase for AMI to highlight its renewed focus on the company's "technology integration" capabilities. Huang pointed out that not only does AMI possess cutting-edge technologies in many areas, but it also excels at integrating these diverse technologies to provide comprehensive services and solutions to its customers.Taiwan has always been a strategic center for ODMs and OEMs, and from its local office in Taipei, AMI provides development tools and technology training, working directly with its OEM and ODM customers to help complete their projects. Throughout its 28-year history, AMI has helped its customers differentiate and strengthen the features and value of their own products. Huang stressed that the only way to create a "win-win" situation in today's competitive environment - where products have to be developed rapidly and dynamically - is to stand closely with customers and face challenges together.Product differentiation is critical in the OEM/ODM industry, and Huang believes that the flexibility that UEFI provides can help the industry to achieve this. Huang further explained that from the software perspective, UEFI has the greatest potential to integrate all of the relevant firmware designs, which enables a clearer division of labor, and gives software and hardware developers increased development flexibility. To provide this flexibility, the UEFI Forum developed the UEFI Shell specifications, akin to a small operating system that essentially replaced DOS. The UEFI Shell specifications enable UEFI to integrate different libraries and allow OEMs/ODMs to create highly differentiated products. For example, OEMs/ODMs can transfer their post-sales service modules directly into the UEFI BIOS, so that customers will no longer need to rely on the OS environment being connected to the Internet to access these. Customers also do not need to worry about forgetting to install the post-sales service programs when they re-install the OS. Additionally, UEFI has a wide range of applications in the embedded market, which frees many embedded products from overt reliance on the more powerful functions of the OS. In this way, the UEFI Shell provides an excellent application and development environment that empowers OEMs and ODMs to add value to their products.During the market's gradual transition to UEFI, Huang has observed that time to market (TTM) for products has shortened, demand for differentiation is on the rise, confidentiality requirements are becoming more stringent and more customers are eager to maintain in-house product development in order to keep key technologies within the company. This makes it more important to provide "DIY" customers with powerful and easy-to-use development tools, as well as modular components with high flexibility and good compatibility.In direct response to these observations, Huang indicated that AMI's cross-sector technologies have culminated in a series of UEFI specification-based development tools, the newest version of which is Aptio V. The primary advantage of Aptio V is its direct compatibility with EDKII, which allows non-AMI developers to quickly get started with these tools. The benefit of this compatibility is the way it allows developers to use previously-developed modules while simultaneously pursuing the newest technologies at the forefront of the industry.Huang stated that AMI's Visual eBios (VeB) is an integrated graphical development environment developed entirely by AMI, which is its biggest advantage when compared to the company's competitors. The VeB development tool can greatly simplify development activities for engineers, allowing them to make modifications by changing the parameter settings of the development environment - thus reducing the chance of human error.Moreover, AMI's VeB development tool also allows multiple projects to share the same source code without interference, thereby reducing manpower costs. Huang indicated that AMI's dedication to the needs of its customers has received strong recognition and support from its partners, another one of the company's unique advantages.In addition to its UEFI firmware and VeB development environment, AMI also provides a series of "Pre-OS" or "pre-boot" applications that comply with the UEFI specifications, such as AMI Provisioning, which provides a UEFI Application Integration Interface; AMI Rescue, a tool for system backup and recovery; AMIDiag, for system diagnostic functions, and vRoom, which provides support for multiple operating systems. AMI is also committed to incorporating UEFI with ARM-based platforms and the Android operating system; these products are already on the market and available to customers for volume production. The rapid growth in popularity of the ARM platform poses both challenges and opportunities for the industry. In response, Huang indicated that AMI plans to use Aptio V as a basis to extend support to the ARM SoC, allowing seasoned UEFI engineers to seamlessly integrate projects with the ARM SoC and get working more quickly and efficiently. With respect to the ARM architecture, AMI already has significant experience in tablet and embedded product development on this platform and is now focused on ARM-64 architecture development in cooperation with several ODMs and OEMs.Despite the sluggishness in the PC market, Huang stated with great confidence how AMI continues to expand its market presence - to include tablet PCs, notebooks, all-in-one (AIO) PCs, servers, industrial computers, cloud computing, remote management and network storage software and hardware solutions. Turning to the Android market, not only has AMI worked with native Android applications on x86-architecture hardware, but also developed its unique DuOS software that enables users to run Android on both Windows and Linux environments and enjoy the great number of Android apps available today. Achievements like these underscore how AMI has evolved to provide truly comprehensive deployments and show how the company embraces a strategy of diversification to drive company growth and adapt to market changes.Pai-Lin Huang, Director of the Strategic Marketing Department at American Megatrends (AMI)
Despite being one of the market leaders in the motherboard and graphics card industries, Gigabyte Technology is relatively unknown as a notebook player. Digitimes recently sat down with Richard Ma, Gigabyte Senior Vice President, and Vincent Li, G-style Sales Division Director, to discuss the company's outlook for the notebook industry in 2013, and its plans for Computex Taipei 2013.Q: Gigabyte is mostly known for motherboards and graphics cards, where do notebooks stand in the company picture?Vincent: In terms of the Gigabyte Group, the motherboard business occupies around 55-60%, in terms of revenues, and another 15-20% is graphics cards. So motherboards and graphics cards occupy almost 80% of total revenues. Another 10% is networking related, including servers, client devices, set-top-boxes (STB) or hubs etc., and the last 10% is mobile devices including notebooks, mobile phones/smartphones.Q: Do you expect that percentage to grow, what is your outlook for 2013?Vincent: This year our market intelligence indicates that first quarter was not so good because the PC market on average dropped around 15% on year. Everybody expects the second quarter to see a smaller drop, around 5% compared to last year, meaning there's an average decline of 10% in the first half of the year.Q: When you say PC market does that cover notebooks, desktops, and tablets?Vincent: It doesn't include ARM-based tablets. I'm taking about what we'd call traditional PC businesses. Our goal is trying to find ways to expand or extend things that are PC related. Another way to think about it is that the boundary is devices that are x86 CPU related, and the other business is concerned with ARM-based devices. Speaking consumer wise, the tablet market has both kinds of devices, ARM-based and x86, so we divide that into Windows or Android-based, as well as iOS. In the past 2-3 years, ARM-based platforms have grown a lot, especially smartphones, and this has had a big impact on mobile PC platforms.The good thing for this year is that for Windows tablets we expect a lot of growth compared to last year. In the second half, x86 CPUs will become more power efficient while still keeping the same performance improvements compared to last year's models. This will help to evolve form factors, so you will see the new generation of Windows tablets being thinner and lighter, and more power-efficient, while also being more powerful. This is good for PC players focused on x86 platforms as we see an opportunity to grow the market based on the new-generation of x86-Windows-based tablets.Of course we also know that Windows 8 will be upgraded too, which will help improve the touch experience, and overall the tablet experience for consumer and business users.Overall I really expect big changes this year based on these factors.Q: What will be your major announcements at Computex 2013?Vincent: At Gigabyte we have three major themes: thin-and-light gaming, powerful ultrabooks, and Windows-x86-based tablets.For notebooks this year Intel will push ultrabooks as mainstream devices, basically we will see the ultrabook concept become the standard design seen in the market, and we'll see ultrabook influences across all platforms. At Gigabyte we have taken our focus from this trend, so you'll see ultrabook features in our gaming notebooks for example. In the past, the gaming platform was very powerful, but came with a huge form factor, so our concept and our technological focus has been how to design a powerful platform but in an ultrabook-like form factor.For gaming platforms, or what we are now calling ultra-gaming, you'll see our new P34 and P35 14- and 15-inch notebooks and later a P37 17-inch model. The main concept behind this series is taking gaming performance hardware into an ultrabook design, a very slim design. The 14-inch model is just 21mm thick, and the definition for ultrabooks in 21mm. Inside we have put Nvidia GTX-level graphics, and to achieve this we designed two isolated and powerful fan outlets in order to handle the output from the GPU. However, the weight is only 1.9kg for the 14-inch model.Another key design concept has been that all our units carry a full set of I/O ports in order to provide the end user with the best usage experience. It's not like with other ultrabooks where you have to sacrifice ports in order to get the design very slim. We think that the user doesn't want to sacrifice.Regular notebook gaming machines are conventionally huge, and very heavy. These types of machines are popular among teenagers and students, but when these users graduate and start work they want to share the same device for work but don't want to carry around a heavy box, and don't want to have a device that has lots of bright LEDs and attention grabbing colors which is common in gaming platforms. Our aim has been to deliver gaming-level performance in a design that is not going to stand out in an office cubicle or meeting room.Richard: Gigabyte already has a top-tier reputation with our motherboard and graphics card engineering and quality. For notebooks, if you want to put Core i7 and GTX 7-series level hardware inside such a slim box and without sacrificing performance like we have, the technology demands are really high in terms of the electronic and thermal integration.Then for storage we still provide a regular hard drive in order to deliver capacity, but we've also implemented support for two mSATA sockets. So we can do SSD RAID for performance, again without sacrificing capacity and still keeping the slim form factor.Also in the 15-inch model we have accommodated an optical drive, which we think meets the most common usage needs at this level. This is a 2.3kg device so we wanted to use that extra space to provide the full usage experience.Q: That's gamers covered, what about the mainstream market?Vincent: For ultrabooks this year the standard, as defined by Intel, says they must be equipped with a touch screen, so that's the key feature you will see in our models for this segment.For ultrabooks we think there are three main customers: users that are concerned about the weight, ones about performance, and ones that focus on price. In the market you can find a machine that has a good price, and it's very slim, perhaps only 15mm, but you have to sacrifice at lot in terms of performance, I/O ports, and storage.For our ultrabook strategy we don't want to compromise on these key features, so our devices meet the standard for ultrabooks - battery-life, thickness, and touchscreen, all these comply with the ultrabook definition - however we don't want to sacrifice performance, so we have implemented the highest performance Nvidia GT graphics, just below GTX performance, and for storage we have a regular HDD alongside mSATA so we can have speed and capacity at a good price combination. Also the main thing is we still have all the I/O ports. That's why we call this category ultra-performance.Richard: I think for users that want an ultrabook but with performance we provide the most balanced design.Q: Of course everyone expects tablets to be big this year, what new products will Gigabyte have to offer?Vincent: Our flagship product for this segment is a design we call the Padbook. This can also be classified in the ultrabook category as we've designed it with a detachable keyboard.If look at the tablets on the market there are no devices with full I/O, but we've got USB 3.0, microSD, audio and HDMI, and we even managed to put in VGA because when you go out to do a presentation or something, the common projector standard is still VGA.Another highlight of this design is the finger mouse, this allows the user to hold it like a tablet and still use Windows in desktop mode which requires a very precise pointer.The final highlight of this tablet is the keyboard. It is not like a traditional 10- or 11-inch keyboard, it's actually full size, it's actually the same as you will find on our 14-inch ultrabooks. This makes such a big difference to the experience. It allows full-speed typing so productivity is not affected. And then we have a trackpad too, which is not common in keyboards for tablets, but we feel that it was an important feature to retain because when you go out, you don't want to have to remember to bring a mouse. It's all about providing "everywhere usage".On the market there are a lot of ARM-based tablets, which are very light and offer long battery life. However, when we design tablets for Windows we want to allow the user to leverage the best experience of the OS. So that means compatibility and also I/O, otherwise why choose Windows? People want touch, but they also want the convention Windows experience. That was our target. That was our original design philosophy.Richard: When people look at our device, what it can offer, they see they don't need an Android device and a Windows PC, they don't need two units, this device meets all those criteria - the form factor, the cost, and the features - again we feel that our design represents the most balanced in the segment.Q: Based on the devices we've discussed so far it seems fair to say you are targeting the high-end market. Is that your strategy - to focus on the high-end and leave the low-end market to others?Vincent: Despite the size and long pedigree of Gigabyte, in terms of mobile devices we are still a newcomer to the market. So at this stage our focus is on the mid-to-high-end market. This allows us to demonstrate our technological capabilities, our wealth of engineering expertise, by giving end-users a premium experience. People ask me, "Don't you want volume?" I do, but at this moment, that would not be the right strategy for us. That is why we have chosen the three-category product strategy we discussed, these give us the opportunity to really highlight the technology, and bring value to the market.Another consideration is that our economic scale is not that big, so trying to compete on price would not be a good strategy for us.Richard: One thing to note is all these products are designed in Taiwan and made in Taiwan. Maybe one or two components are sourced from China, but all design comes from our in-house teams, our industrial design, mechanical engineering, electronics and software/BIOS, everything is done in Taiwan. This is very special compared to the rest of the market. We design ourselves, we manufacture by ourselves at our factory in Taoyuan, and we do all the sales and marketing ourselves from here in Taipei.Q: Doesn't manufacturing in Taiwan limit your volumes?Richard: Right now, we aren't targeting volumes of one million units a month. Our focus is brand positioning, we want consumers to be aware of our products and our value-added technology. If we focus on building a strong brand now based on features and quality, we are confident that our market will grow and grow.Q: Recently we've seen quite a few novel designs for convertible notebooks - for example dual touch screen designs or ones where the keyboard and trackpad are reversed so that the screen can be positioned between the two. Why has Gigabyte stuck with the more traditional rotating hinge or book designs?Richard: There are a lot of ways to implement this concept - when you want both the traditional notebook and tablet usage modes in the same device. Our research and testing into the different form factors showed that these implementations satisfy to widest range of applications. We feel you need to consider the most common applications foremost, and make sure not to compromise usability there.For example in the design you mentioned where the keyboard is moved to the bottom, first this means you lose the use of the trackpad when in folded mode, and more importantly you lose the palm rest space. If the keyboard is on the bottom edge where do your palms rest? How do you maintain a comfortable wrist angle without getting tired? And how can you use this on your lap without it moving? There's no point changing a design just to be new or different if it means sacrificing usability. Sometimes traditional designs are best.Q: What are your key markets currently, and what are your aims for 2013?Richard: Because right now our volumes are not very high, there is little difference in our market shares across regions. North America, Europe, Asia, in each region the picture is about the same. There are certain countries such as China and India where the market is so big, then volumes are a bit higher, but product prices there are a bit lower too. In these cases we have to adjust our product mix and change the SKUs on offer, and so overall things balance out.Our long term policy is to enlarge the mid-range to high-end segment, even in emerging markets, and to remain responsive to the market. Building brand image with good products, good designs, and good features and innovation will remain the main focus.Compared to say five years ago the market has changed considerably. It used to be that you knew what to do for each season, when to release new products, when to clear stock, when to cut prices etc. It used to be you knew what to do each quarter. But in the past two years the market has changed, sometimes you can't accurately see two months ahead. We have learned a lot. We are careful about setting strategy, but we also have to be able to listen to market feedback and respond to change quickly.For Gigabyte I think the important thing for us it to continue to show passion. We need to bring value to the market for customers, and differentiate by leveraging our specialties. I don't want to be like a typical PC player pushing out new products just to follow the latest tread, or cutting prices to sell more. If we can make really good products growth will come naturally. That is my philosophy.Richard Ma, Gigabyte Senior Vice PresidentPhoto: Company
While natural resources are being drained slowly, energy costs are rising and demand for advanced power supply options is increasing. One of these options is digital power supply, which provides advanced power efficiency and improved power factor correction (PFC). With over 10 years of experience in the high-efficiency power supply unit (PSU) sector, Compuware Technology has been at the forefront for developing such technology and plans to be sporting various prototypes at Computex 2013. Compuware's associated VP Ivy Yeh spoke with Digitimes about what the company will be sporting at the event and what kind of trends it is preparing for in the future.Q: Compuware's theme for Computex 2013 is digital power supply. Please explain why the company chose this, as well as what kind of products can use digital power.A: Compuware believes that using digital design concepts will enhance power performance for all sorts of companies. As digital power supply demand is increasing in the market, vendors who can produce power supply products with better efficiency and improved PFC as well as less TDH percentage will also be in high demand - a trend that Compuware wants to show it is taking seriously. Also, while improvements to the above-mentioned factors are not necessarily new to redundant power supply, there are few vendors who can mass produce digital power, which is where Compuware comes in. The company wants to emphasize at Computex 2013 that it has already established an integrated supply chain for providing various redundant power supply products such as 800W/1280W/1400W/2000W redundant power supply units, all of which visitors can view at the event.Q: High-density power supply is also a focus for Compuware at Computex. What advantages does this technology have in the market and what kinds of customers are likely to use it?A: The width of a standard 19-inch chassis is fixed; however, for some high-end applications of which the motherboard and GPU card might occupy more space, a compact size power supply that has high density may be requested by the system integrator.For example, high density power supply will be the necessary mechanical design to fit in a 1U system demanding 1+1 redundant power solution. For this situation, Compuware has made its 400W/500W/600W/700W/980W models. If it is a GPU application, the GPU card will occupy more space, and thus, there will be less space for power supply. Additionally, HPC (high performance computing) and SC (supercomputing) applications request more memory slots on the main board. In that case, the size of the main board will be larger than a normal one and there will be smaller space for power supply.Q: Why are companies going to choose your products in the market? What are the company's strengths and advantages over other competitors?A: Compuware has been dedicated to create new products for such segments as cloud computing, supercomputing, high-performance computing and servers to meet new market demand, and focuses on implementing high-efficiency performance and high-density design into its products. These aspects have given Compuware a wide range of customers who continue to come back to us over the years, which continues to push the company's reputation in the server industry.Q: How are Compuware's new products adapting to new market trends?A: As the cloud computing concept keeps growing, demand for solutions including servers, storage, and data centers is also growing. Green products are also a key trend in the IT industry as well, thus higher efficient and performing power supplies are gaining more traction as solid system solutions. High efficiency is in high demand in the market, which happens to be the core value and strength of Compuware.Q: What other trends does Compuware see occurring in the market throughout 2013 and into 2014?A: Efficiency. This is still the key factor for now and in upcoming years in order to meet both green trends as well as help companies save costs.Q: How does Compuware's Taiwan branch as well as its manufacturing plants in Taiwan play a role in the development of the company's overall performance?A: The R&D team located in the Compuware Taiwan office offers high-end redundant power supply to the market. The branch also pays close attention to the reliability of every new product's power supply and its overall NPI (new product introduction). The Taiwan manufacturing plants meanwhile communicates with the R&D team to control the NPI state as to ensure quality.
As many motherboard players have started paying attention to the gaming market, Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), as a major motherboard vendor, is also set to expand its gaming business with a new product series. In addition, the company is eyeing better shipment performance in 2013, boosted by its new Durathon certification system to guarantee product quality. Digitimes recently met with company vice president of Channel Business Unit, Samuel Yeh, to talk about ECS' plans for Computex 2013, the status of its existing product lines, and its marketing strategies. Q: What new products or technologies will ECS showcase at Computex 2013? A: We will mainly focus on motherboard products and will showcase our new certification system called Durathon, an innovation that allows our motherboard products to feature quality surpassing the industry standards. Meanwhile, we will also release a new series of gaming motherboard products called LEET. Since demand for conventional PC products has already started to slow down, most motherboard players have turned to the high-end segment looking for opportunities. ECS will not miss this trend and will place significant resources on strengthening our competitiveness. At the show, you will be able to see our new Intel 8 series-based LEET motherboards with several demonstrations to showcase their performance. In addition to motherboards, ECS will also demonstrate several all-in-one PCs with our latest designs at the show. Some of the features include lay-flat support that allows multiple users to play games such as chess on flat table-like systems. We will also offer different display sizes from 21- to 23.6-inch for these all-in-one PCs. ECS also has some tablets we developed with Intel's support. These Intel-based tablets will mainly be pushed for OEM orders, and feature 7- or 10-inch displays. During the show, we will also host the finale of our MODMAN competition, a tournament for chassis customization enthusiasts. Q: Can you elaborate on Durathon certification and LEET gaming? How are these technologies going to help you gain advantages in the market? A: Durathon is a certification system that is far stricter than the average in the motherboard industry. We use better materials for our motherboards and put them through strict tests such as temperature tests running from minus 10- to plus 50-degree Celsius, higher than the industry's standard range of between minus 5 to plus 45, to ensure our customers receive products with higher than standard quality. Before shipping, our motherboards need to pass more than 1,500 tests including compatibility, functionality, temperature and system boot checks. Through these tests, we are aim to let customers know that a trustworthy motherboard needs to be at least able to pass these examinations before it is handed to them. The capacitors we use on our motherboards are also higher grade compared to the market standard. All these demands are aimed at providing our customers with products that surpass their value in price. In the future, we will continue to run Durathon certification and expand tests to ensure our product quality remains the highest. Durathon comes from two words: Durability and Marathon. We designed the certification system hoping our motherboards' durability and stability can be similar to running a marathon - long and tough. Through the program, we can demonstrate to customers our advantage over product quality. Q: What are the considerations when designing the LEET series? A: The product series' name LEET comes from the word elite, a favorite word used among gamers. If you see the logo designed for the series, it represents a fist, showing gamers are ready for competition and its golden color represents ECS' high-end Golden series product line. We designed the LEET brand to let gamers know that the products in the series are designed specifically for them and we are adding functions and technologies that they want. The launch of LEET will be a brand new start for ECS and we are very excited about the strategy. As for our marketing strategy, it will also be different from in the past. We will cooperate with gaming teams to endorse our products. We are already in negotiations with some teams and should have results in the near future. Q: What are the company's thoughts about the motherboard industry in 2013? Are there any specific markets that ECS is focusing on for 2013? A: I believe the gaming segment will continue to grow in the future. For example, we are now seeing increasing numbers of live broadcast gaming tournaments, showing that the number of people watching e-sports has increased. Therefore, we have high hopes about the gaming market's future and have placed a lot of resources into the development of our LEET series. As for the motherboard industry in 2013, we are taking a conservative attitude about its development, but yet still hope to see a good outcome. China will be an important market for us in 2013 as the country has already become the main driver of demand. Although we suffered a shipment drop in China in 2012, we will try to make it up gradually in 2013. Currently, ECS mainly ships own-brand motherboards to the China market and we are reconstructing our local channels, hoping to raise shipments. Q: What are ECS' thoughts about Intel's Haswell platform? Is it going to benefit the company in the second half? Are DRAM shortages affecting ECS' motherboard sales performance? A: The current status of the Haswell platform is in line with our expectations and since we have always followed Intel's steps, our strategy is unlikely to change. As for the DRAM shortages, since most gamers do not really care about the prices they pay for their hardware, the issue is unlikely to impact our sales in the short term. Q: What is MODMEN? What are you trying to achieve through the competition? Will the company look host more competitions in the future? A: MODMEN is a contest we are hosting for motherboard modding enthusiasts worldwide. The competition has already run for a year and will conclude on June 6 at Computex with a championship showdown. We currently have five candidates who will join the finals and the winner will receive a prize of NT$1 million (US$33,393). In addition to our judging panel, we will also have Computex visitors and fans on Facebook vote for the winner. We need to thank our Golden series motherboards for the birth of the MODMEN idea. Because of the motherboards, some users started developing unique chassis designs to fit with their Golden motherboards, and once we saw that was happening we decided to expand and promote the activity. If you come to our MODMAN tournament, you will see that modding is a rather interesting craft, modders demonstrate a lot of innovation, creativity and artistry in their designs. Q: What is the status of the all-in-one PC market? A: Despite the PC market's flat performance in recent years, the all-in-one PC segment is still expected to enjoy double-digit percentage growth in shipments in the future, and we expect to be able to catch up with the trend to achieve strong shipment performance. Sam Yeh, vice president of Channel Business Unit at ECSPhoto: Joseph Tsai, June 2013
