China's No. 1 gaming hardware brand Colorful Technology joins forces with Chaintech to exhibit its high-end brand iGame series at booth M1112 at Computex 2018.iGame is Colorful's only graphics card brand with a high-end positioning. Undergoing a decade of development since its debut in 2008, the iGame series has expanded to include motherboards, storage and memory devices entering the market this year and has secured the largest share of the brand graphics card market. Gearing iGame toward the gaming segment, Colorful forayed into international markets in 2017 and is enjoying rapid growth in shipments to Southeast Asia and Korea. In particular, iGame SSD is gaining widespread popularity in Japan.With 22 years of continuing efforts and extensive experiences in the DIY computer market, Colorful has been able to stay as the top vendor in the China brand graphics card market for 15 years in a row.Colorful participates in a variety of gaming events to engage gamers. Hot League of Legends (LOL) e-sport teams including Snake and RNG have chosen to use iGame in training and competition. Colorful has designed iGame with gamers in mind and crafted motherboards and graphics cards specifically for e-sport teams. Furthermore, Colorful has been participating in or sponsoring e-sports tournaments including LOL, Overwatch, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Dota 2 at home and abroad and also organizing its own Colorful Games Union (CGU) competitions. By partaking in global e-sports games, Colorful looks to enhance the iGame brand awareness.Celebrating iGame's 10th anniversary, Colorful will unveil a whole-new logo in addition to the latest generation graphics cards, motherboards and memory devices with the iGame theme design at COMPUTEX 2018. It will also jointly present two new gaming computers with Chaintech and Intel in the afternoon of June 6.At Comnputex 2018, Colorful will showcase iGame GTX1080Ti Vulcan X OC - the world's first graphics card with an LCD display, in addition to iGame GTX1080 Vulcan X OC, iGame GTX1070Ti Vulcan X Top, iGame GTX1070 Vulcan X OC and iGame GTX1060 Vulcan X OC 6G of the Vulcan series. Furthermore, the high-end iGame GTX1080Ti Kudan will also be on exhibit along with the Neptune and Customization series. The 10th anniversary retro edition and new products featuring the iGame design concept will also be the highlights of this year's exhibition.Colorful's iGame GTX1080Ti Vulcan X OC is powered by the advanced Pascal GP102 GPU, featuring a one-key overclock of 1620MHz and a boost clock of 1733MHz as well as 11G GDDR5X 352-bit memory. It is equipped with a high-performance power supply for the GPU core and memory, the SWORIZER cooler, 1.68 million color-capable RGB lighting, and PCB protected with high-strength alloy. As a most prominent feature, the cooler is built in with the iGame Status Monitor which shows the core frequency, core temperature, fan speed and memory usage during operation. The core usage and load level is displayed in the form of a load bar so the user can stay aware of the current operating condition of the graphics card.Also at Computex 2018 will be iGame Z370 Vulcan X and the limited-edition motherboard specifically for RNG crafted by the outstanding iGame team. They use ATX Intel Z370 motherboards with LGA 1151 sockets designed to fully utilize the power of 8th generation Coffee Lake processors and feature RAM overclock to 3200MHz as well as three PCI-E and three PCI-Ex1 slots. Targeting the high-end gaming segment, these motherboards are refined with the exclusive iGame pure-power inductance (IPP) and silver plating technology (SPT) that enables two times better stability and antioxidant property than copper plating, USB ports for gaming gear, GamerVoice with audio gold-plating interface delivering 8-channel sound and KillerE2500 network cards for enriched gaming experiences.Aside from consumer-oriented gaming products, Colorful will also present motherboards and graphics cards for industrial control applications. Moreover, Colorful will also feature an exhibit themed on cryptocurrency mining products including mining motherboards, graphics cards and machines that are in massive shortage in China.Colorful will continue working on technology innovations, channel expansions, brand publicity enhancements and international market developments. As Colorful places great importance on its new product announcements and exhibitions at Computex 2018, Shan Wan, chairman of Colorful, will personally attend Computex 2018 to exchange views with industry players. Colorful extends a warm welcome to visitors to booth M1112.Colorful's flagship iGame series

Vision Advance Technology has introduced the Gen-3 Platform to the market. VATek took years of dedication to bring the new series to reality. The Gen-3 portfolio includes two Super Enmoder chips (B3+ & B3) and a brand new Super Modulator (A3). The new platform is designed to exceed the expectation of modulator makers by offering technologies and features that previously could only be implemented with FPGAs. This will be the first non-FPGA chip to support DVB-T2 (base 1.3.1) modulation.Gen-3 Super Enmoder can support up to seven different digital TV standards, and featuring AVC + MPEG-2 dual format encoder. By incorporating key modulation capabilities and media processing performance advancements, the Gen-3 Super Enmoders are designed to transform headend products into ultimate broadcast devices, which can work and deliver high quality TV program to every digital TV in different standards. That helps headend manufactures to expand the market worldwide.Gen-3 Super Modulator (A3) has new architectures, engineered to result in significant improvements over the Gen-1 modulator. A newly added stream engine that can work as transport stream regulator that can implement PID filtering, regulate transport stream and insert customized PSI/SI info into media stream. A3 can support any video encoder without MUX units. A3 modulator is also equipped with VATek's latest modulator engine, bringing more DTV standards including ISDB-T & DVB-T2 to the chip. It allows manufactures to design UHD (4K) DVB-T2 headend product with ease.VATek will also release new firmware platform to all series of products. The new platform is engineered to deliver efficiency and design flexibility. The update allows each VATek product to share the same developing tools and control logic. Several features and function upgrades will be found in the new firmware as well. The most significant improvement will be the control method. A register-like control mechanism will be introduced to replace the current gateway control system. R2 control logic will be also available in the new firmware platform, allowing every VATek modulator & Enmoder chip to control R2 RF chip automatically. Developers no longer need to build R2 driver, and will still be able to access the RF chip, and users can even conduct IQ balance calibration with a few mouse clicks. VATek also has made a major upgrade to extend TS API, and with new auto data repeat features, the chip now can automatically mux the repeated PSI/SI data into the stream reduce system loading dramatically. VATek will provide paid PSI/SI design service for customers who use the new platform. They can purchase the authorization key to enable the PSI/SI function.The VATek Gen-3 series is available this June and is expected to be found in consumer devices in the fourth quarter of 2018. Visit VATek website at www.vatek.com.tw for details.VATek GEN-3 Product Comparison Super Modulator A3Super enmoder B3+Super enmoder B3Media iNTERFACEsTS Serial/Parallel,USBBT656 / 1120,I2SBT656 / 1120,I2Sfhd h.264 / mpeg-2 eNCODER---YesYesdvb-t2YesYes---dvb-t, atsc, j83a/b, dtmb, isdb-tYesYesYesSource: VATekThe VATek GEN-3 series, designed to support next-generation broadcast technology. New DVB-T2 & AVC video engine brings exceptional performance and quality to the industry.

Gigabyte, an industry leader in server systems and motherboards, has collaborated with local cloud and storage platform providers to showcase an integrated "AI/Data Science Cloud" at Computex 2018, demonstrating how customers can build a private cloud to own and protect their data while connecting with public cloud services, and incorporate inbuilt AI (artificial intelligence) capabilities to use big data for real-time deep learning and inference processing (AIoT).Gigabyte Featured HardwareGigabyte's Network & Communication Business Unit exhibit area at Computex will showcase its six main product lines and their target applications: H-Series Density Optimized Servers for cloud computing; G-Series High Performance Computing Servers for AI; S-Series Storage Servers for big data; W-Series Workstations for content creation and software development; R-Series General Purpose Rack Servers for enterprise IT; and Racklution-OP Open Rack Standard products for hyper scaled data centers.Product featuresProduct seriesTarget applicationComputex 2018 featured productProduct featuresH-SeriesDensity-optimized servers for hyper-converged data centers / cloud service providersH281-PE02U 4 node server with dual-socket Intel Xeon Scalable CPU and 4 expansion slots per node & optional liquid cooling systemG-SeriesHigh performance GPU servers for AI and deep learningG481-S804U dual-socket Intel Xeon Scalable CPU server w/ 8 x SXM2 NVIDIA V100 / P100 GPU modules & optional liquid cooling systemS-SeriesScale-out storage for onsite, offsite software defined storageS451-3R04U dual-socket Intel Xeon Scalable CPU server w/ 36 x 3.5" SSD / HDD drives and E-ATX form factor motherboard for configuration flexibilityR-SeriesGeneral purpose rack servers for enterprise ITR281-Z922U dual-socket AMD EPYC 7000 series CPU server w/ 24 x 2.5" ultra-fast NVMe U.2 storage drives. Top benchmark score on SPEC.orgW-SeriesOffice environment workstation for media content creation, or an innovative platform for software developmentW281-T91Dual-socket Cavium ThunderX2 ARM CPU workstation towerRACKLUTION-OPOpen rack standard compliant servers for hyper scale data centersDO60-MR012OU 21" open rack standard compliant mini-rack w/ compute & storage nodesAI/Data Science Cloud DemonstrationGigabyte will not only showcase its hardware during Computex but also demonstrate to its customers the practical applications of its products by building a private cloud in collaboration with its partners InfinitiesSoft and Bigtera. It calls the demonstration an "AI/Data Science Cloud." It is an AI and big data analysis enabled hybrid cloud, enabled with Infinities CloudFusion cloud management platform and Bigtera VirtualStor scale-out storage, running onsite at Gigabyte's Computex booth on its H-Series, G-Series and S-Series server products. It provides remote cloud services in categories such as compute, storage, big data analytics, deep learning and AI training, and management functions. The platform has a high availability architecture that can avoid a single point of failure and can be quickly scaled out at remote locations.Infinities CloudFusionGigabyte's "AI/Data Science Cloud" has been built with InfinitiesSoft CloudFusion, a comprehensive cloud management solution that can support and integrate over 30 different private and public clouds with a single platform. For this demonstration, a hybrid cloud has been built with OpenStack and Bigtera VirtualStor storage working seamlessly under the hood of CloudFusion, running on Gigabyte's H281-PE0 and H261-N80 hyper-converged servers, and connected with public cloud services. HPC application containers have also been set up and integrated into this cloud with Kubernetes and running on Gigabyte's G481-S80 GPU servers to provide remote AI training and deep learning capabilities. Since CloudFusion supports a highly elastic open API interface for developers, many other additional public or private clouds can also be connected and integrated into this platform to ensure it is future-proof.Bigtera VirtualStor ScalerGigabyte's "AI/Data Science Cloud" includes a scale-out storage cluster created with Bigtera's VirtualStor Scaler storage platform and running on Gigabyte's S-Series storage servers. VirtualStor Scaler provides customers with a cost effective x86 scale-out storage solution that allows them to pay as they grow. VirtualStor Scaler's scale-out architecture provides the flexibility to specify the storage type (NAS, SAN, object storage), performance (IOPS and throughput), and efficiency all while delivering resilient and secure capacity. VirtualStor Scaler's unique advantages include offering multi-tenant storage capabilities to provide different "virtual storage" for different tenants, making storage management flexible, as well as providing functionality to consolidate legacy devices and help seamlessly migrate old data to a new storage system without downtime.Gigabyte to demonstrate integrated "AI/Data Science Cloud"Gigabyte's Computex booth is at Taipei World Trade Center Hall 1, D0002For more information on Gigabyte server products, please visit: http://b2b.gigabyte.com For more information on InfinitiesSoft CloudFusion, please visit: http://www.infinitiessoft.com For more information on Bigtera VirtualStor Scaler, please visit: http://www.bigtera.com

V-Color unveils its latest DDR4 Prism RGB memory and PCIe SSD VPM800 at Computex 2018. Carrying on the V-Color style, the new products feature not only a total upgrade to performance but also dazzling designs and colors, bringing gamers never-before-seen visual enjoyments and top-notch performance.Combining the latest heat sink design and improved light bars to present fascinating lighting effects mimicking water flow, DDR4 Prism RGB is a must-have for PC modders and gamers. It comes with several models including the entry-level DDR4-2666 8GB CL 16 1.2V memory available in red and gray and two high-end models DDR4-3000/3200 8GB for heavy gamers and overclockers. DDR4-3000 8GB CL 15 1.35V features silver heat sinks while DDR4-3200 8GB CL16 1.35V, the highest spec among the Prism RGB series, is equipped with heat sinks made of special metallic materials with optimal heat transfer property to enhance heat dissipation. Built with Samsung B-die chips, DDR4-3200 8GB unleashes full overclocking potential for gamers to keep pushing the limit.DDR4 Prism RGB products are built with 10 layers of PCB. They support Intel XMP 2.0 one-key overclock, enabling an instant boost to blazing performance. RGB lighting is controlled by Gigabyte and ASRock motherboard software and works in sync with other RGB devices to create dazzling, ever-changing colorful effects controllable by users in a snap of fingers.The new RGB PCIe SSD VPM800 series is another highlight of V-Color's offerings. VPM800 SSDs use Silicon Motion's SM2263XT controllers and support PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and NVme 1.3 protocol. Take VPM800 480GB for example. It enables sequential read performance of up to 2,000MB/s and sequential write performance of up to 1,600MB/s. Maximum random reads and writes are rated at 250K IOPS and 200K IOPS respectively. VPM800 uses Toshiba's new 3D NAND Flash chips to significantly boost storage density. On the outside, V-Color still incorporates color IC patent in its PCIe SSD, coupled with RGB lighting, to instantly transform the cold, hard feel of an SSD to an eye-catching RGB work of art in concert with the lighting effect of Prism RGB. The two make a new gaming package with compelling cost advantages that gamers simply cannot miss this year.V-Color chairman Tomson Ho thinks RGB is iconic and trendy in the gaming market. This is why V-Color is launching at full blast the Prism RGB series combining cool looks and powerful performance. "Prism RGB series uses metal heat sinks with optimal heat dissipation effects. Its weight also exceeds other products in the same category by more than 10g. V-Color aims to bring unrivaled experiences to gamers, no expense spared," said Ho with confidence.With respect to the RGB synchronization issue gamers are concerned with, Ho indicated V-Color is working on a patented solution that combines software and hardware and synchronizes peripheral devices. The solution is scheduled for release by year-end 2018. Users can control RGB synchronization simply using a smartphone app. It is easy to use with no need for complicated BIOS settings.Amid a market keen to get into overclocking, Ho holds a different view. "V-Color focuses on products that have a larger user base and strives to build up market presence in this segment. V-Color enables gamers to overclock their systems by themselves for better cost-performance ratios, rather than telling them where the limits are right in the beginning," said Ho.Furthermore, V-Color's unique iMS technology has been around for a while. Ho commented, "iMS is now available with a simple push of the F4 key and the motherboard will automatically engage in memory error checking and correcting without the need for complicated BIOS operations. As such, motherboard makers no longer have to teach users how to do this. V-Color is working with Gigabyte and ASRock on iMS, which allows software and hardware to combine forces, demonstrating V-Color's outstanding R&D strength." To put it another way, V-Color looks to collaborate with system vendors and enhance service quality and efficiency to further boost system vendors' brand image. The partnership projects are 98% finished and final releases are planned for June 2018.V-Color's Computex 2018 booth at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, Hall 1, J0818

Following a business re-organization in the second half of 2017, Gigabyte Technology is now looking to unifying all its products under the Aorus gaming brand, seeking to bring a consistent user experience, according to Gigabyte's Sales and Marketing Center vice president, Eddie Lin.To expand Aorus' penetration, Gigabyte also recently entered several new component and product business segments and will release a series of devices for each of them to answer customers' demand. Digitimes recently had a chance to chat with Lin about the company's operation, the company's plans for the gaming businesses, and the cryptocurrency business opportunity.Q: What is the latest status of Gigabyte's Aorus gaming product lineup?A: Although Gigabyte has just gone through a business re-organization, the company actually has not changed much in terms of the basic business structure. Most of the changes are in the business culture.In the past, Gigabyte's product development strategy focused on individual projects: we would complete one project before moving on to the next. We identified features and technologies our gaming customers would want and implemented them into our devices.Now, the new strategy is to think how our products can echo one another all under our Aorus gaming brand. For example, our motherboards, graphics cards, mice and keyboards should all have a unified industrial design to build up the feel they belong to the same series, and the same concept also applies to our software user interfaces and user experience.Most importantly, this feel of a unified series should also echo what our customers are seeking in their gaming products. Simply put, we want to let our customers feel that their positive experiences using Gigabyte's products are consistent, so whatever values they are seeking in any of Gigabyte's devices can also be found in any of our other products.Since Gigabyte has already merged the desktop and all its component businesses into a unified gaming business group, we expect the process of synchronizing our product lines to be much easier than before.For Aorus, in addition to our existing product lines including notebooks, motherboards, graphics cards, keyboards, mice and other peripherals, we have expanded the brand's product portfolio to include new devices such as monitors, solid state drives (SSD) and DRAM.As for the desktop, Gigabyte continues focusing on developing its Brix series mini-PCs.Q: What are the company's goals for Aorus gaming products in 2018?A: The year 2017 was the beginning year of our Aorus gaming brand and for the second year, Gigabyte's main targets are to further refine the series by listening to and understanding the needs of our customers; to work with the customers to enrich the gaming ecosystem; and to expand the series both horizontally and vertically.For the vertical expansion, we have been strengthening our marketing resources and approaches to improve related contents and materials. We also have created a mascot to represent the Aorus spirit.For the horizontal expansion, cultivating deeper into each region is Gigabyte's main focus. For example, the company has opened several Gigabyte flagship stores in China for demonstrating and selling Gigabyte's hardware. We are also partnering with Internet cafes in China, decorating them with Aorus themes as a form of promotion.Meanwhile, Gigabyte continues taking aggressive approaches to supporting e-sport events and is scheduled to host Aorus Open PUBG Tournament 2018 in June and July with gaming competitions to take place in several major regions including China, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, the US and France.The company is also increasing its resources for sponsoring e-sport activities in 2018. Gigabyte sponsored a total of nine major gaming events in 2017 and the number will rise to 12 this year.In addition to sponsorships for downstream e-sport players, Gigabyte also has new partnerships with Intel and Nvidia. Gigabyte is currently working with Intel to push Core i+ series motherboards that natively support Optane Memory. These motherboards all come with 32GB of Optane Memory for enhanced CPU performance.Customers will also continue seeing Gigabyte's exclusive technologies including RGB Fusion with Digital LEDs, ESS Sabre reference DAC music chip with audiophile Grade capacitors and Ultra Durable components in their favorite Gigabyte motherboards.However, we are not satisfied by simply adopting the best components into our products. Our target is to study customers' usage habits and improve our components to meet the habits.Despite the business re-organization and the management changes, Gigabyte is still the same Gigabyte and our user-oriented business culture and emphasis on product quality remain the same.We have also been forming partnerships with other enterprises for some interesting gaming-related projects. Apart from Arous Open PUBG Tournament 2018, which has helped us established partnerships with several enterprises, we have also collaborated with Electronic Arts (EA) to release an energy drink in Germany with Aorus and EA product images on the can.We also have been in talks over many other projects, but it is not yet time to reveal the details about them.In addition to physical products, we have many cooperation cases with game streamers worldwide for product promotions and are also investing resources to launch marketing campaigns with upstream and downstream partners.In the past, Gigabyte's promotion activities focused mainly on traditional channels, but since 2017, we have started to use more diverse types of marketing in different channels. With Gigabyte having integrated all its gaming-related businesses under the Aorus brand and the fact that we have shown our determination of running the Aorus brand, we have earned many invitations from worldwide businesses and gamers for gaming-related cooperation.Q: What innovations or technologies will be unveiled or showcased at Computex 2018?A: We do not have any new products for Computex 2018 as our upstream platform partners have not prepared any new products for the show.However, we are showcasing our extended peripheral product lines under the Aorus brand including SSDs and memory and are displaying the full series of our existing Aorus brand products at our Computex booth.Q: What is Gigabyte's thought on cryptocurrencies? Will ASICs have some impact on graphics card demand from the cryptocurrency industry?A: Cryptocurrencies are one of the applications of the blockchain technology and the technology is becoming a popular topic in the IT industry. To fairly distribute the cryptocurrencies to users, mining has become one of the main methods for the system to give out the digital currencies.However, mining is not the only way as there are also cryptocurrencies that have adopted other type of distributing methods.In my personal view, blockchain actually has a lot potential and because of the technology's characteristic of creating records in multiple terminals. It is able to significantly limit a trading system's dependence on a center machine and eliminate many of the recording flaws seen on traditional systems. Compared to blockchain business in general, opportunities from cryptocurrencies are not as stable.As for the rise in demand for cryptocurrency ASICs, I believe the growing popularity of ASICs will have some impacts on the cryptocurrency industry's demand for graphics cards, but the problem will not be as serious as many market watchers expect.As I said before, cryptocurrencies are a rather unstable business. Each ASIC is created specifically for the calculation of one particular type of cryptocurrency and cannot be switched to support other cryptocurrency mining. This will give advantages to graphics cards, which can widely support any kind of cryptocurrency mining process. Most miners will be wary of the risks of switching all its machines to ASICs.Eddie Lin, Gigabyte's Sales and Marketing Center vice presidentPhoto: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, May 2018

NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) Taiwan attracted more than 2,200 technologists, developers, researchers, government officials and media last week in Taipei. GTC Taiwan is the second of seven AI conferences NVIDIA will be holding in key tech centers globally this year. GTC is the industry's premier AI and deep learning event, providing an opportunity for developers and research communities to share and learn about new GPU solutions and supercomputers and have direct access to experts from NVIDIA and other leading organizations. The first GTC of 2018, in Silicon Valley in March, hosted more than 8,000 visitors. GTC events are showcases for the latest breakthroughs in AI use cases, ranging from healthcare and big data to high performance computing and virtual reality, along with many more advanced solutions leveraging NVIDIA technologies.GTC 2018 in San Jose debuted the NVIDIA DGX-2 AI supercomputing system, a piece of technology that AI geek dreams are made of. The powerful DGX-2 system is an enterprise-grade cloud server that combines high performance computing with artificial intelligence requirements in one server. It combines 16 fully interconnected NVIDIA Tesla V100 Tensor Core GPUs for 10X the deep learning performance compared with its predecessor, the DGX-1, released in 2017. With a 1/2 a terabyte of HBM2 memory and 12 NVIDIA NVSwitch interconnects, the DGX-2 system became the first single server capable of delivering 2 petaFLOPS of computational capability for AI systems. It is powered by NVIDIA DGX software stack and a scalable architecture built on NVSwitch technology.In this interview, Marc Hamilton, NVIDIA's Vice President of Solutions Architecture and Engineering, talks about GTC and the development of Taiwan's technology ecosystem. He and his engineering team work with customers and partners to deliver solutions powered by NVIDIA artificial intelligence and deep learning, professional visualization, and high performance computing technologies. From many visits to ecosystem partners and developers, Hamilton is very familiar with the pace of AI development in Taiwan.AI is dealing with HPC-class scaling problemsAI technologies elevate the enterprise by transforming the way we work, increasing collaboration and ushering in a new era of AI-powered innovation. AI solutions are rapidly moving beyond hype and into reality, and are primed to become one of the most consequential technological segments. Enterprises need to rapidly deploy AI solutions in response to business imperatives. The DGX-2 system delivers a ready-to-go server solution that offers the path to scaling up AI performance.DGX-2 is designed for both AI and HPC workloads and simplifies the speed of scaling up AI with flexible switching technology for building massive deep learning compute clusters, combined with virtualization features that enable improved user and workload isolation in shared infrastructure environments. With this accelerated deployment model and an open architecture for easy scaling, development teams and data scientists can spend more time driving insights and less time building infrastructure.For example, running HPC applications for weather forecasting means dealing with the massive scale of computation nodes. Forecasts are created using a model of the Earth's systems by computing changes based on fluid flow, physics and other parameters. The precision and accuracy of a forecast depend on the fidelity of the model and the algorithms, and especially on how many data points are represented. Computing a weather forecast requires scheduling a complex ensemble of pre-processing jobs, solver jobs and post-processing jobs. Since there is no use in a forecast for yesterday, the prediction must be delivered on time, every time. The prediction application is executed on a server node and receives reports from the monitoring programs distributed over the compute nodes.Typically, these would be large distributed memory clusters, made up of thousands of nodes and hundreds of thousands of cores. Many HPC applications work best when data fits in GPU memory. The nature of the computations is built on interaction between points on the grid that represents the space being simulated, and stepping the calculated variables in time. It turns out that in today's HPC technology, the moving of data in and out of the GPU is more demanding in time than the computations performed. To be effective, systems working with weather forecasting and climate modeling require high memory bandwidth and fast interconnect across the system.NVSwitch maximizes data throughput between GPUs leveraging NVLinkMemory is one of the biggest challenges in deep neural networks (DNNs) today. Memory in DNNs is required to store input data, weight parameters and activations as an input propagates through the network. Developers are struggling with the limited memory bandwidth of the DRAM devices that have to be used by AI systems to store the huge amounts of weights and activations in DNNs.Having long relied on PCI Express, when NVIDIA launched its Pascal architecture with the Tesla P100 GPU in 2016, one of the consequences of their increased server focus for Pascal was that interconnect bandwidth and latency became an issue. The data throughput requirements of NVIDIA's GPU platform began outpacing what PCIe could provide. As a result, for their compute focused GPUs, NVIDIA introduced a new interconnect called NVLink.With six NVLink per GPU, these links could be teamed together for greater bandwidth between individual GPUs, or lesser bandwidth but still direct connections to a greater number of GPUs. In practice this limited the size of a single NVLink cluster to eight GPUs in what NVIDIA calls a Hybrid Mesh Cube configuration, and even then it's a NUMA setup where not every GPU could see every other GPU. Utilizing more than eight GPUs required multiple systems connected via InfiniBand, losing some of the shared memory and latency benefits of NVLink and closely connected GPUs.In a DGX-2 system, there are 16 Volta GPUs in one server. So NVIDIA introduced NVSwitch, which is designed to enable clusters of much larger GPUs by routing GPUs through one or more switches. A single NVSwitch has 18 full-bandwidth ports, three times more than a single Tesla V100 GPU, with all of the NVSwitch ports fully connected with an internal crossbar.The goal with NVSwitch is to increase the number of GPUs that can be in a cluster, with the switch easily allowing for a 16 GPU configuration with 12 NVSwitch interconnect (216 ports) in the system to maximize the amount of bandwidth available between the GPUs. NVSwitch enables GPU-to-GPU communications at 300GB per second, which already has double the capacity from the DGX-1 (and the HGX reference architecture it's based on). This advancement will drive hyper-connection between GPUs to handle bigger, more demanding AI projects for data scientists.NVIDIA wants to take NVLink lane limits out of the equation entirely, as using multiple switches should make it possible to build almost any kind of GPU topology in theory.Deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow don't need to understand the underlying NVLink topology in a server thanks to NVIDIA's NCCL (NVIDIA Common Collectives Library), which is used by TensorFlow and all leading DL frameworks. NVIDIA's AI software stack is fully optimized and updated to support developers using DGX-2 and other DGX systems. This includes new versions of NVIDIA CUDA, TensorRT, NCCL and cuDNN, and a new Isaac software developer kit for robotics. Hamilton highlighted the release of TensorRT 4.0, a new version of NVIDIA's optimizing inference accelerator. TensorRT 4.0 integrates with the TensorFlow 1.7 framework. TensorFlow remains one of the more popular deep learning frameworks today. And NVIDIA engineers know their GPU well and make TensorRT 4.0 software to accelerate deep learning inference across a broad range of applications through optimizations and high-performance runtimes for GPU-based platforms.Hamilton mentioned lots of TensorFlow users will gain from the highest inference performance possible along with a near transparent workflow using TensorRT. The new integration provides a simple API that applies powerful FP16 and INT8 optimizations compiling TensorFlow codes using TensorRT and speed up TensorFlow inference by 8x for low latency runs of the ResNet-50 benchmark.In edge computing, TensorRT can be deployed on NVIDIA DRIVE autonomous vehicles and NVIDIA Jetson embedded platforms. Deep neural networks on every framework can be trained on NVIDIA DGX systems in the data center, and then deployed into all types of edge devices. With TensorRT software, developers can focus on developing advanced deep learning-powered applications rather than taking time for fine tuning performance for inference deployment.HGX-2 server platform as a reference design for cloud data centersThe DGX-2 server is expected to ship to customers in Q3 2018. Meanwhile, bringing together the solution expertise of Taiwan's ecosystem partners and global server manufacturers, NVIDIA announced the HGX-2 cloud-server platform with Taiwan's leading server makers at GTC Taipei. The NVIDIA DGX-2 server is the first system built using the HGX-2 reference design.The server industry has been one of the few industries that have remained strong for Taiwan ODMs and increased opportunities in the AI field will help Taiwan system makers. NVIDIA engineering teams work closely with Taiwan ODMs to help minimize the development time from design win to production deployments. The HGX-2 is designed to meet the needs of the growing number of applications that seek to leverage both HPC and AI use cases. Those server brands and ODMs are designing HGX-2-based systems to build a wide range of qualified GPU-accelerated systems for hyperscale data centers.The HGX-2 server reference design consists of two baseboards. Each comes equipped with eight NVIDIA Tesla V100 32GB GPUs. These 16 GPUs are fully connected through NVSwitch interconnect technology. With the HGX-2 serving as a building block, server manufacturers will be able to build full server platforms that can be customized to meet the requirements of different data centers.NVIDIA AI collaboration in TaiwanHamilton says the areas of AI collaboration in Taiwan include hands-on training of 3,000 developers on leading applications of deep learning and providing high-level internship opportunities for Taiwanese post-doctoral students to work with NVIDIA engineering teams. The first AI hospital in Taiwan, sponsored by the LEAP program, which is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), is making it possible for doctors to see disease earlier and better understand it through advanced breakthroughs in AI.Another case Hamilton highlighted is AI helping semiconductor foundries to identify wafer defects. The solution focused on using AI to sharpen the domestic semiconductor market's competitive position. The wafer defects detection system uses physics-based Instruments to examine the images of wafers by leveraging NVIDIA GPU-based optical neural network. The same idea has been modified for use in the printed circuit board (PCB) industries to make visual inspection of PCBs more accurate and give production line mangers a significant edge in discovering and resolving product issues.NVIDIA HGX-2 cloud server platform

With the finalization of USB PD 3.0 Programmable Power Supply (PPS) protocol last year and mobile phones widely adopting USB-C interface, the unification of standard for mobile devices will not only drive fast charging opportunities, but also create new use cases and mobile device peripheral requirements. In response to the trend, VIA Labs Inc has taken the lead to launch certified USB PD 3.0 solutions, aiming to help customers quickly enter the market with complete reference designs."In order to fulfill the increasing needs for thinner and lighter phones, faster charging speed, and full-screen display, new mobile phones will not only adopt USB-C interface, but will also eliminate the traditional 3.5mm audio jack," said David Hsu, associate VP of Product Marketing, VIA Labs, Inc. "The trend will become prevalent gradually from high-end phones down to middle-range phones, which will definitely drive opportunities for new peripherals, such as USB-C headsets, dongles, and docking stations."A mobile phone with only one USB-C port and no audio jack will create some use cases that are different from current consumer habits. The most common one is the need to charge and listen to music at the same time. Therefore, new types of peripherals are required to provide more convenient user experience. According to Hsu, "For a long time, peripherals have played the role of 'extending possibilities,' and VIA Labs is devoted to providing more use cases to further extend USB-C's diverse functions."With the concept of 'Extending More Possibilities,' VIA Labs is committed to developing silicon solutions for various application scenarios, so that mobile phone makers can use them to create higher values and differentiated features for their peripheral devices, in a bid to meet consumers' practical application requirements and to create better user experience.Take VIA Labs VL104 DisplayPort Alternate Mode controller as an example, it integrates one upstream USB-C port and two downstream USB-C ports to form one combination package, App6 reference design. The two downstream ports can support both charging and the headphone to enable intelligent interchangeable functions. It is a design that truly meets and even optimizes user experience. In addition, VL104 integrates buck-boost converter on a single chip to dramatically reduce the PCB size. As a result, designing more varied, compact and smaller peripheral devices has been made possible.For USB-C power adapter applications, VIA Labs has introduced a highly integrated VP302 chip, which is optimized for next-generation USB-C wall charger and power adapter applications that support real-time finely adjustable voltage and current output. The new Programmable Power Supply (PPS) capability is the foundation for several new fast charging methods that promise not only more rapid charging, but also lower device temperature when compared to legacy methods. VIA Labs VP302 has obtained USB-IF PD 3.0 certification.Before the specification of fast charging for mobile phones is unified, every mobile phone manufacturers will have their unique specification for fast charging. Though it is convenient in a short term, in a longer term it will cause damage to mobile phones due to adapter mismatch. After the finalization of USB PD 3.0 PPS protocol, we will see USB-C fast charging and manufacturers' own technologies coexist in the near future. It is expected that USB-C fast charging will eventually hit the mainstream as consumers get used to using any USB-C-based power adapter to support different brands of mobile phones.Delivering 'combination-package solutions' based on application scenarios of consumer needsIn order to confront the fiercely competitive USB-C silicon market, VIA Labs chose to target at dongle and hub applications that were not so prevalent at the beginning. With correct strategy of emphasizing improvements to user experience and providing complete turnkey solutions, VIA Labs has successfully helped peripheral makers move into mass production quickly, and its products have also been adopted by Huawei, Nintendo and other internationally renowned manufacturers."We aim to provide combination 'packages' for various application scenarios. With the diverse functions of USB-C, we have developed seven reference designs for App1-App7 use cases, covering from simple video dongle, the combination of data, video, audio, and charging, to multi-function dongle with any port charging through. Now, the term, App1-App7, has become a common usage in the industry," said Hsu. "For example, VL104 can be used to support App6/App7 use cases. Just like ordering meals from MacDonald's, our customers can easily and quickly get their wanted designs by simply telling us the number (App1-App7)."As the development of USB-C is taking off, creation value will be a key to success in the market. With the penetration rate of USB-C in mobile phones gradually increasing, phone makers will try to provide better standard peripherals to create differentiated features. Once consumers' habits are established, the demand for third-party peripherals will also rise.To address the need, VIA Labs will strengthen cooperation with phone makers to further explore the mobile peripheral market by conceiving possible use cases and providing them with diverse design options. For example, by fully leveraging the advantages of USB-C interface, docking stations can be used as an extension of voice assistant for mobile phones to enable the functions beyond listening to music and charging. This, again, demonstrates the concept of "Extending More Possibilities." Hsu is also optimistic that more new application scenarios and requirements for USB-C will pop up, and the business outlook for the market is very promising in 2019.VIA Labs' VL104 supports APP6: Interchangeable charge through audio dongleVIA Labs' VL104 supports APP7: Multi-function dongle + any port charge through

The growing awareness on environmental protection and energy conservation has prompted governments worldwide to enforce energy efficiency policies. With the development of electric vehicles (EV) as one of their priorities, many countries are now planning on a timeline between 2020 and 2040 to ban new fossil-fuel cars' sales. Worldwide efforts to promote EV adoption have introduced immense opportunities, attracting many Taiwan high-tech players to launch into the market. Channel Well Technology (CWT), with years of experience in the power supply business, is also making active efforts in the R&D of EV charging pile equipment. Wei-Ting Ou, who's in charge of CWT's EV charging pile department, points out that most people tend to think Taiwan-based manufacturers focus more on developing technologies for EV body structures, however, achievements they've accumulate in charging pile industry is in fact another rising star.CWT engages in collaborations with the startup eTreego by providing interior power supply systems to be integrated into its charging piles. Most charging stations currently on the market can only support a few cars once and may have difficulties satisfying demand in high traffic areas. eTreego's charging pile on the other hand offers a chance to reduce the contract capacity of the charging station through non-uniform charging technology. For eTreego's piles, aside from critical control modules, rely heavily on interior robust power supply technologies. With this need, achievements through long-term devotion in power supply have allowed CWT to be the perfect match.Overall grow of the EV industry did not advance as expected for the past for reasons as follows. First of all, due to competitions among leading international automakers, the Taiwan market had not unified EV charging standards during EV industry's early-stage, which led to holdbacks of domestic manufacturers, resulting in longer R&D cycles. Furthermore, consumers generally have the impression that EVs run out of power quickly. Long charging time and insufficient charging stations are additional factors that hinder EV's growth.However, EV's market is picking up its speed, and the explosive growth can be expected, especially driven by government policies, according to Ou. This is also the main reason why leading companies are scrambling for a share of the market. Taiwan's EV standards and regulations are close to its completion. EV battery life has greatly improved from a 100km range to 300km or above. There are DC charging stations that can charge an electric car's battery to its 80% in less than 40 minutes. On the other hand, for prolonging the battery life purpose, AC charging generally requires 4 to 12 hours which is recommended that EV owners charge their vehicles at home overnight. In brief, convenience and feasibility of EV charging have significantly improved.The growing EV infrastructure market is now creating rising opportunities and in the years to come to those who are well prepared. To capture these opportunities, CWT has taken the initiative not only to work on its own power supply research but also to engage in joint developments with eTreego in an attempt to gain a strong foothold in the EV charging equipment market.Wei-Ting Ou, in charge of CWT's EV charging pile department, expects flourishing opportunities as government policies promote EV adoption worldwide.

Clientron Corp, a global leading provider of thin client, POS and embedded systems, is introducing its latest products with multiple innovations at Computex 2018. The products demonstration of various industrial applications include embedded IPCs for food processing industry, the streamlined thin clients in banking scenario, and POS terminals for restaurant setting solution. The complete product series of Clientron thin client, POS terminal, and embedded IPCs are on exhibit at booth K0427a at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Hall 1.Seizing the trend of IoT and Industry 4.0, Clientron is ramping up efforts toward IPC product development and market expansion. Kelly Wu, president & CEO, Clientron, stated, "Taiwan-based manufacturers have been active in the IPC market for many years. IPC firms are characterized by being small but exquisite. Clientron, with years of embedded product design, production, and service offering experiences, is capable of providing high-end industrial-grade products with wide temperature and voltage ranges, waterproof and dustproof as well as ability to maintain long-term operation under extreme circumstances."For the IPC product line, Clientron introduces its brand new products including single board computers (SBC), embedded systems and industrial panel PCs to accommodate different customers and vertical market demand. At the show, Clientron's Pike-AL-1500SP, crafted specifically for the food processing industry, is an industrial panel PC offering IP69K protection against high temperature and dust. The Pike-AL-1500SP has passed spray test with steam pressure of 100bar (1450 psi) at a temperature of 80 degrees C. It is built with grade 304 stainless steel casing to enable protection against heat and corrosion and prevent hazardous substances from leaching due to heat or acid, thereby guaranteeing safe and sanitary operation in a food processing plant. For factory automation and parking solution, the Mace-AL-200 embedded system provides "Tsuba Kits" with a flexible modular design for customers to easily add I/O modules and build systems tailored to their specific needs.In terms of Clientron's most renowned thin client product line, Clientron is showcasing a complete lineup of thin clients from entry-level, mid-range, high-end and up to high performance IP40 industry thin clients. Clientron debuts several new thin client models including the cost-effective S-cube Pi3 B+, running on Raspberry Pi3 B+ platform with ultra-lightweight 0.18L volume, and ultra-low power operation below 3W on average. The S-cube Pi3 B+ thin client supports the most used of the connection protocols, including RDP, HDX, and VMware Horizon. It has one HDMI display, WiFi and Bluetooth wireless connectivity, and is suitable for education, financial counter, and the markets require simple task. For the mainstream thin client segment, Clientron's brand new S810, is equipped with Intel's next-generation Gemini Lake Celeron power-efficient quad-core processor, providing dual display outputs, M.2 high-speed interface, and supporting innovative POF (Port-on-Foot) I/O expansion ports for more easily and flexibly expand to meet different field and application requirements. For high-end and flexible thin clients, the F620 features 4K definition and supports up to quad displays to meet the requirements of the healthcare and multimedia sectors. In addition to stand-alone thin clients, Clientron provides a new generation of all-in-one thin client TC220 with 21.5-inch capacitive multi-touch, and also uses Intel's new generation Gemini Lake Celeron quad-core processor, which targets at medical care solution, financial markets and more applications. Furthermore, Clientron is displaying its entire POS product portfolio. For all-in-one POS terminals, Clientron is presenting PST650 suited for the food service industry. The PST650 features streamline, compact and lightweight design and built-in thermal printer integration supporting multiple well-known printer models, saving counter footprint and cost. Another focus on the show is the PT2000 POS terminal, aiming at cost-effective product segment with valuable benefits supporting multiple peripheral solutions to enhance user experience. Also at the show are a variety of the extended POS peripherals.Meanwhile, Clientron is exhibiting multiple innovative products, of which the R800 thin client was recently recognized with the 26th Taiwan Excellence Award. The Bello, Wing, Ares series of fanless multi-functional POS terminals also have won the Taiwan Excellence Award. There are also newly introduced embedded IPCs to highlight Clientron's capability of meeting the needs of multiple customers with a high-quality, complete product line.Clientron showcasing its IPC products at Computex

Cayin Technology, a digital signage solution provider, will take part in Computex 2018. Located in the Business Solution and Smart Retail section of the tradeshow, Cayin will introduce a few trendy integrations to help digitizing in-store experience and management, including audience measurement, indoor air quality monitoring, and customer interactions.Audience measurementPartnering with Quividi - a global leader in digital signage analytics and interactivity - Cayin will bring together an interactive advertisement solution. Quividi provides a privacy protecting computer-vision technology that helps screen networks, retailers, and brands finely measure and classify their audience, understand the performance of their content, and support audience-aware experiences, using real-time data to make creative and messaging more engaging and effective.Two screens will be showcasing the intelligent interactive solution. The first one will showcase examples of adverts that can be contextually triggered against the profile and behavior of the audience, while the second one will show the wealth of data collected by the platform.Indoor air quality monitoringMost countries have regulations regarding air quality standards within confined commercial spaces. Customers, especially parents with young children, also pay more attention to and want to be informed on those conditions these days. By merging indoor air quality (IAQ) monitors with digital signage, Cayin provides a solution that will give customers a reassuring shopping environment.Interactive retail applicationInteractive solutions often create better customer engagements, and by incorporating digital signage into the mix, retailers can save on labor costs as well. Customers can simply scan the package to find out about prices, product info, and even link to an e-commerce site for further engagement. The flexibility to integrate with POS systems also gives the solution the advantage as an add-on to existing systems.In addition to the smart retail solutions, visitors will find out about Cayin's upcoming partnerships, projects and products. Cayin is at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, Hall 1, Booth K1324.