Asustek Computer has unveiled the first motherboard under its new TUF series (The Ultimate Force), the Sabertooth 55i. The series is developed to meet the heavy computing demands of power users.The Sabertooth 55i is built upon Intel's P55 chipset and is equipped with the new CeraM!X heatsink.The heatsink features a ceramics-based composition-commonly used in the aerospace industry for heat insulation which dissipates heat rapidly, while its rough surface functions as an expanded area for heat to induct into the surrounding air, the company highlighted.The motherboard also includes a fan frame that is compatible with most standard 40mm or 50mm computer fans and is positioned directly below the memory slots in order to provide additional cooling.The motherboard's capacitors and VRM MOSFETs have also already been certified for military-level purposes through stringent testing, the company claimed.Meanwhile, Micro-Star International (MSI) has launched a 15.4-inch Intel Calpella-based notebook, the GT640, featuring Intel's Core i7 processor, Windows 7, and Nvidia GeForce GTS 250M discrete graphics card.The GT640 comes with MSI's exclusive ECO Engine, a power-saving solution that can be accessed via a shortcut button on the control panel. With the push of a button users can activate the ECO engine and customize the notebook's power settings to suit specific uses, MSI detailed. MSI GT640 notebook specifications Item Detail Operation system Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium CPU support Intel Core i7 processor Chipset Intel PM55 Display 15.4-inch TFT-LCD display VGA Nvidia GeForce GTS 250M with 1GB DDR3 memory Memory Two SO-DIMM slots supporting DDR3 1066/1333MHz memory up to 4GB Storage 250GB, 320GB or 500GB SATA HDD Super-Multi DVD burner or Blu-ray drive Dimension (L×W×H, mm) and weight (kg) 360 × 260 × 33-36 and weight 2.7 (W/ battery) Sources: Company, compiled by Digitimes, September 2009Asustek TUF Sabertooth 55i motherboardPhoto: CompanyMSI GT640 notebookPhoto: Company

Toshiba has unveiled two ultra-thin notebooks, the 11.6-inch Satellite T115 and 13.3-inch Satellite T135. Both models are manufactured by Quanta Computer and are expected to hit shelves on October 22, according to industry sources.The Satellite T100 series ultra-thin notebooks are priced starting at US$449.99, according to Toshiba.Measuring less than one-inch thick and starting at 3.49lbs, the Satellite T100 series adopts Windows 7 and power-efficient Intel ultra-low voltage processors, as well as technologies to enhance power saving capability to deliver up to nine hours of battery life, Toshiba highlighted.The Satellite T135 will be available in red, black or white, while the Satellite T115 will only be available in red or black. The two notebooks also feature Toshiba's Fusion Finish design that extends to inside the notebook, around the keyboard, touch pad and the display, said Toshiba.The Satellite T100 series also includes a Hard Drive Impact Sensor that helps guard data from the daily bumps of mobile life and a USB port with Sleep-and-Charge technology, which enables users to charge various consumer electronics even when the notebook is turned off, Toshiba added. Toshiba Satellite T100 series specifications Model T135 T115 Display 13.3-inch TruBrite LED backlit display 11.6-inch TruBrite LED backlit display CPU Intel Pentium SU4100 or Intel Pentium SU2700 Intel Pentium SU4100 or Intel Celeron 743 Memory DDR3 DDR3 HDD Starting at 250GB (5400-rpm) Starting at 250GB (5400-rpm) OS Windows 7 Home Premium Windows 7 Home Premium Price Starting US$599.99 Starting US$449.99 Sources: Company, compiled by Digitimes, September 2009Toshiba Satellite T135 ultra-thin notebookPhoto: Company

Pleasanton, CA - September 29, 2009 - NextWindow, the market and technology leader in optical touch screens for desktop PCs, monitors and large-format displays, today announced that its 2700 Touch Overlay product has begun shipping to partners. The NextWindow 2700 turns any large display, such as a plasma or LCD, into an interactive multi-touch screen. In addition to offering full mouse-like functionality, the NextWindow 2700 touch screen overlay allows users, for the first time, to take advantage of native Windows 7 multi-touch features on a large-format display."With NextWindow's multi-touch capabilities and Windows 7 compatibility, ISVs can now begin building applications for large-format displays," said Anthony Uhrick, VP of Large Format Display at NextWindow. "Users can go beyond the mouse to take advantage of features such as pinch, swipe and zoom to enlarge text, advance through photos, or adjust an image - all courtesy of multi-touch." With its multi-touch functionality, NextWindow is setting the stage for ISVs and integrators to develop new and exciting applications by allowing ever-more creative ways for users to interface with their computers. NextWindow is one of the only companies that offers multi-touch capabilities for large-format displays (from 32" to 103"). In addition to Windows 7, NextWindow provides support for Windows Vista and Apple OS X.NextWindow touch screen overlays have been deployed in thousands of commercial and business computing environments worldwide. Systems integrators and resellers consistently choose NextWindow for its high-quality customer service and technical support organizations, advanced manufacturing facilities including new offices in Southeast and North Asia, and its proprietary multi-touch technology that enables users to pan or zoom images using simple pinch-and-swipe techniques. The 2700 Touch Overlay is ideal for public-facing applications such as digital signage or shopping mall directories as well as business offices and classrooms. The NextWindow 2700 utilizes sophisticated optical imaging technology and a robust design to provide a durable, full-clarity solution. While it is an overlay, the 2700 can be easily installed by the end user or system integrator without opening the enclosure or potentially voiding the display warranty. As a USB HID compliant device, the touch screen will provide single-touch mouse emulation without installation of proprietary drivers, ensuring compatibility with most any software application.

Osram's LED technology contributes to the energy efficiency of Volkswagen's L1 concept car presented at the Frankfurt International Motor Show (IAA). The vehicle, which according to Volkswagen can go into production in 2013, has headlights that are equipped with new Osram Joule JFL2 LED systems and matching reflectors. The LED modules take care of the dipped and main beam functions and consume far less energy than conventional headlamps. Joule JFL2 LED modules will be introduced in production in early 2010 and can then be included in new vehicle models easily and across multiple platforms.One key to the unparalleled energy-efficiency of Volkswagen's L1 are Osram's highly efficient Joule JFL2 LED modules, which are used in the front headlights. What is special about them is that the dimmable LED light sources are responsible for the important dipped and main beam functions. Each of the only five centimeter high headlights requires a total of three modules. Two provide the ECE-compliant (Economic Commission for Europe) main light and one the high beam. Apart from the high performance diodes, this is made possible by the reflectors Volkswagen has developed, which shed an ideal light on the road and are therefore the perfect complement to the JFL2 LED modules.Thomas Reiners, director of application technology for special lighting at Osram is confident that "compact and efficient LED sources will be mandatory for low consumption and electric vehicles in the future in order to achieve the car industry's CO2 objectives. A dipped beam headlight with these light sources will use less than 15 watts and therefore save 40 watts of power input per vehicle side compared with a halogen solution".With a power input of only 19 watts per dipped beam, the one-liter car's lighting is far more energy-efficient today than conventional headlight solutions, in which mostly halogen lamps with 55 watts are used. Even Xenon lamps at only 35 watts of input use 20% more energy on dipped lights (95% of night-time driving) than two Joule JFL2 LED modules."Energy efficiency and ease of integration were good reasons to rely on LED solutions for headlights on our one-liter car. This technology is just as forward-looking as our vehicle," says Henning Kiel, lighting engineer at Volkswagen. Replaceable LED light sources represent a genuine alternative to the lamps already available in the car industry. "They can bring about significant benefits both for end customers as well as during headlamp and vehicle production," says Christian Meier, Osram product manager Joule LED systems.Osram LED solutions not only show their strengths in terms of efficiency. With a lifetime that normally exceeds that of a vehicle plus their considerable robustness against shocks and vibration, they are far less maintenance-intensive than conventional lamps. From early 2010, Joule JFL2 LED modules will be available to light other vehicles with economical diodes, too.Joule JFL2 LED modules were developed in collaboration between Osram automotive lighting and the LED specialist Osram Opto Semiconductors. Together these companies develop solutions for the automotive industry from individual LEDs to standard LED systems such as Joule. The L1's headlights are the result of a joint project by Volkswagen and Osram. The lighting manufacturer has developed an even more economical version of the Joule JFL2 LED module for them, which uses 14 watts in the standard configuration. Volkswagen designed the reflectors, which enable legally compliant headlights to be implemented with the latest lighting technology.Osram Joule JFL2 LED for Volkswagen's L1 concept carPhoto: CompanyVolkswagen's L1 concept car equipped with Osram Joule JFL2 LEDPhoto: Osram

Adding to an already broad and innovative portfolio of surface mount packaged high power LEDs, Everlight Electronics introduces the "Shuen" series - our most powerful and brightest LED series in a slim ceramic package.The Shuen package is a surface-mount high-power device offering high brightness in a compact form factor, making it suitable for various lighting applications including general illumination as well as, flash, spot, signal, industrial and commercial lighting. The thermal pad of this device is electrically isolated providing for improved thermal and electrical characteristics. It is well known that the benefits of LED devices are their environmental friendliness, energy savings, reliability and long life. The Shuen series exhibits all these advantages while providing high efficiency luminous output. The life-time of the Shuen series as well as other LEDs is defined as the percentage of initial light output remaining after a specified period of time. Shuen colors of cool-white, neutral-white, warm-white, green, cyan, blue, and royal-blue colors average 65,000 hours for 70% lumen maintenance (B50 L70) under 350mA operating current. This projection is based on constant current operation with junction temperature maintenance at or below 135°C. Other Shuen series colors like red, orange, amber, and royal-red also average 65,000 hours for 70% lumen maintenance (B50 L70) under 350mA operating current, but this projection is based on constant current operation with junction temperature maintenance at or below 110°C.Within the global solid-state lighting market, Everlight strives to conform to all environmental initiatives. The Shuen series meets the European Union directives on the restriction of hazardous substances in electronic equipment - namely the RoHS directive. All materials and processes of the Shuen series are free of form lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent, polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) or polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE). Everlight is also promoting closer working relationships between our R&D and Sales and Marketing teams to better meet and exceed our customer's expectations from both product offering and technology perspectives. The Shuen LED series and its many technical features is a result of fostering a closer relationship between these teams.Features:Small package with high efficiencyTypical view angle of 120°ESD protection up to 8KVSoldering method: SMTBinning parameters: Brightness, forward voltage, wavelength and chromaticityMoisture sensitivity level: 1RoHS compliantApplications:General lightingDecorative and entertainment lightingSignal and symbol luminaries for orientation marker lights (e.g. steps, exit ways, etc.)Exterior and interior automotive illuminationEverlight Shuen series high-power LEDs Photo: Company

First-tier graphics card makers Micro-Star International (MSI), Asustek Computer and Gigabyte Technology have launched their latest graphics cards based on AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5800 series GPUs.MSI offers a high efficient radiator that comes with a heat-pipe, heat-sink and fans for its HD 5800 series cards. The radiator's integrated two-slot design can decrease the GPU temperature rapidly, but still delivers noiseless performance, the company said.MSI also offers DOT Express technology for dynamic overclocking designed to deliver up to 10% extra performance and significantly enhance synchronized GPU and DDR memory performance.Asustek's Radeon HD 5800 series graphics cards are equipped with Voltage Tweak technology to enable users to raise GPU voltages from 1.15V to 1.35V and from 1.088V to 1.4V respectively and boosting GPU and memory clock performance.The HD 5870-based graphics card from Asustek is currently listed for around NT$15,990 (US$492) in the Taiwan market.MSI R5870-PM2D1G graphics cardPhoto: CompanyAsustek Radeon HD 5800 series graphics cardsPhoto: CompanyGigabyte GV-R587D5-1GD-B graphics cardPhoto: Company

Hong Kong, September 24, 2009 –Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) today announced it is shipping volume production of its 40-nm Stratix IV GX EP4SGX230 FPGAs. The Stratix IV device was the industry's first 40-nm FPGA available when it began shipping at the end of 2008 and it continues to lead the market as the only 40-nm FPGA in volume production. The Stratix IV family offers the highest density and highest performance FPGAs available today, and is used in a variety of end customer's high-speed backplane and cabling interfaces, chip-to-chip interconnects and protocol-bridging applications.Stratix IV GX FPGAs deliver an unprecedented combination of power, performance and I/O bandwidth to designers manufacturing multi-gigabit interconnected systems. The high-performance FPGAs feature Altera's latest generation of proven transceiver technology. The 36 transceivers embedded in the EP4SGX230 FPGA offer superior signal integrity with excellent jitter performance at data rates operating between 600 Mbps and 8.5 Gbps. The transceivers support several key industry standards and serial protocols such as PCI Express Gen1 and Gen2 (x1, x4 and x8), Serial RapidIO, Gigabit Ethernet, XAUI, CPRI (including 6G CPRI), CEI 6G, GPON, SFI-5.1 and Interlaken. The EP4SGX230 FPGA features 230K logic elements (LEs), 13.9 Mbits of embedded memory and 1,288 18x18 multipliers."The significant lead we have on the competition at the 40-nm node has enabled us to establish Stratix IV FPGAs as the most widely adopted 40-nm FPGAs in the industry," said Luanne Schirrmeister, senior director of component product marketing at Altera. "We continue to hit every key milestone in rolling out our 40-nm devices and remain on target to deliver our entire family of Stratix IV FPGAs to customers."AvailabilityThe Stratix IV GX EP4SGX230 FPGA is now shipping in volume production. Engineering samples of Altera Stratix IV E, Stratix IV GX and Stratix IV GT FPGAs are also available today. Altera remains on schedule to ship its entire Stratix IV FPGA family in volume production by April 2010.

VIA Technologies has announced VB8003 mini-ITX motherboard featuring a dedicated on-board graphics processor that it says is ideal for a range of digital media applications.The VB8003 utilizes the VIA VX800 MSP's integrated GPU to offer multi-display configurations including dual-HDMI, LVDS, DVI and VGA, while powering HD content playback across as many as four displays.VIA VB8003 mini-ITX motherboardPhoto: Company

AMD has launched its next-generation ATI Radeon HD 5800 series graphics cards supporting Microsoft DirectX 11, the new gaming and compute standard shipping shortly with Windows 7.AMD will initially release two cards – the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and the ATI Radeon HD 5850 – each with 1GB GDDR5 memory. With the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cards, PC users can expand their computing experience with ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology and accelerate their computing experience with ATI Stream technology, said AMD.The ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cards delivers up to 2.72 teraflops of compute power in a single card, translating to performance in the latest DirectX 11 games, as well as in DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL titles in single card configurations or multi-card configurations using ATI CrossFireX technology, said AMD.The ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cards is supported by add-in-board companies including Asustek Computer, Club 3D, Diamond Multimedia, Force3D, Gigabyte Technology, HIS, Micro-Star International (MSI), Multimedia, PowerColor, Sapphire Technology, VisionTek and XFX.AMD ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics cardPhoto: Company

Toshiba America Electronic Components ( TAEC) has announced a series of solid state drive (SSD) modules using the latest generation Toshiba 32nm MLC NAND flash at the ongoing IDF 2009. The Toshiba SG2 modules are offered in two types, one of which is based on the new low-profile mini-SATA (mSATA) interface standard.The new Toshiba SSDs are available in 30GB and 62GB capacities, with volume production slated for October.The mSATA modules leverage the speed and reliability of the popular SATA interface, in a small form factor module (30x4.75x50.95mm) that connects to the system board using the low profile SATA connector. Adaptive power mode and SATA device initiated power management typically reduce power consumption to less than half of the read power level when the device is in idle, standby or sleep mode."Initial adoption of most SATA solid state drives has followed the HDD form factor. Our latest 32nm mSATA and half-slim case-less modules enable hardware designers to add the performance and reliability advantages of a solid state drive in a smaller footprint for notebooks, portable electronics and other embedded storage applications," said Scott Nelson, VP Memory, TAEC.Citing IDC, mini-notebook shipments are expected to grow at an annual average of around 15% from 2009 to 2013, Toshiba said. PC manufacturers are thus looking for SSDs that combine small size with higher storage capacities and advanced performance. Toshiba new 32nm SSD lineup Half-slim SATA-2 module Mini SATA-2 module Capacity 30GB 62GB 30GB 62GB Size (mm) 54x4x39 30x4.75x50.95 Mass 9g (Typ.) 9g (Typ.) Interface Serial ATA-2 (3Gbps) Voltage 5V 3.3V Reading speed Up to180Mbps (sequential mode) Writing speed Up to 70Mbps (sequential mode) Power consumption Read: 1.3W (Typ.) Write: 1.8W (Typ.) Idle/Standby/Sleep: 65mW (Typ.) Temperature 0 to 70 degrees Celsius Mean time to failure 1 million hours Shock Operating and non-operating, 1500G Source: TAEC, compiled by Digitimes, September 2009Toshiba 32nm SSD modulesPhoto: Company