Workstation

HP says the ultra-thin 15.6-inch workstation will be the fastest in its size class per unit volume when it launches this August. It will also be the first mobile workstation to incorporate recycled plastic retrieved from oceans to promote sustainability.

The latest market research from the Gartner group indicates that the market for PCs has experienced its "sharpest decline" since 2013. However, it seems this year-on-year drop in shipments, which applies to the first 3 months of this year (1Q2020), is related more to the Covid-19 pandemic rather than to demand for this category.

The Microsoft Surface Go 2 and the successor to the Microsoft Surface Book 2 should soon be available, and more details about both devices are starting to leak online. The price range for the Microsoft Surface Go 2 is expected to start at US$399 with the convertible launching in the next few weeks. The refreshed Microsoft Surface Book devices have been given unsurprising names.

The refreshed EON15-X gaming and NS-15 workstation laptops from Origin PC now come with a choice between Ryzen 5 3600, Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 9 3900 SKUs with up to 32 GB of DDR4-2666 RAM, up to an RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU and up to 6 TB of storage.

The new Comet Lake-H high-end processor Intel Core i7-10875H has been tested on Geekbench as part of a Gigabyte Aero 15 XB laptop. The results left the Comet Lake chip behind the scores achieved by the Coffee Lake i9-9980HK found in the powerful Acer ConceptD 9 Pro, and the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H in HP’s Pavilion 24 grabbed a much higher multi-core score.

Huawei's Atlas series is this OEM's take on the AI cluster, which delivers extremely high-volume processing for this area of computing. One of its latest variants, the 900, has just won a Red Dot Design Award for 2020. This group has conferred the prize on the cluster for its innovative form-factor and deployment mechanism.

Acer's 17.3-inch workstation shines with a lot of processing power, a 4K touchscreen display with an included Wacom digital pen and a Thunderbolt 3 port. The configuration is excellent otherwise as well: 32 GB of RAM, 16 GB of VRAM, NVMe SSD (1 TB).

Virtual private networks (VPNs) are popular tools among those who want to safeguard their internet usage and the data involved. The sudden and widespread need to work from home has given them a new dimension of necessity, however. Now, their uptake in the US and Canada has reportedly increased 35% in March 2020.

An HP Pavilion 24 All-in-One PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 4800H APU inside it has been spotted being tested on Geekbench 5.1, where it managed a good single-core result and unsurprisingly a very strong multi-core score. The latter result was higher than what the Intel Core i9-9980HK amassed when we tested it as part of a new Acer ConceptD 9 Pro workstation.

Jabra has announced new editions to its collaboration- and co-working-focused Evolve series of headsets. They are compatible with the Unified Communications (UC) platforms typically used in offices, and may block a greater degree of distractions with new Digital Hybrid Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) features.

Intel recently refreshed its Cascade Lake server-grade processors. Huawei has announced that its latest servers can support these Xeon chipsets. They are members of this OEM's FusionServer Pro series, and include the 2298 V5, 1288H V5, and 2288H V5 rack variants.

As chic as the Apple iMac is, its design has remained unchanged since 2013. While it is no getting long in the tooth, two designers have created an extremely detailed concept that shows what the next iMac could look like. They have made some compelling suggestions for what hardware should be included, too.

Samsung has announced that the first million units of its revolutionary DRAM made using extreme UV (EUV) techniques have been shipped. This new kind of DDR4 memory's production method is touted to result in higher performance, as well as the ability to make more chips in a shorter space of time. It will also be applied to next-gen DDR5 and LPDDR5 products soon.

A survey of US households with broadband internet resulted in findings that 76% of this group reported that they would find life harder without these services. Given that this research was conducted in the last quarter of 2019 (4Q2019), this number may be even higher now. This study also suggested that more ISPs should bundle streaming subscriptions with their services.

GlobalData is an analysis firm that produces the ‘Tech, Media & Telecom Trends' report. It has just released a re-evaluated form of the same for 2020 that takes the economic impact of COVID-19 into account. It indicates that all aspects of the titular sectors will suffer as a result of the pandemic.

Cloud gaming is an emerging alternative to user-owned PC set-ups, in that the massive amounts of GPU power required to sustain it are accessed remotely. Its market had an estimated value of US$12.53 billion in 2018. However, a new report estimates it could acquire an additional ~$44 billion over the next 7 years.

Sculptor Monitor is a start-up that has launched its eponymous new external display on Indiegogo. The company claims that it addresses a number of drawbacks of the average standalone monitor with this new device. They include USB type C ports that only do data or charging, bulky designs and a lack of 4K.

Intel recently stated that it would be “narrowing” its Cooper Lake family of Xeon server CPUs. The move comes in the context of rapid AMD gains in the segment and the impending arrival of EPYC Milan.

Geekbench listings of what appears to be a 32-core (16-core dual-socket) Intel Ice Lake Server processor have surfaced. Ice Lake Server appears to put up a strong show against AMD's Epyc Rome 7702P in Geekbench 4 running on Windows Server 2019 with half the number of cores. AMD, however, has the core-count advantage, which still eludes Intel owing to lower yields on the 10nm process.

A desktop PC user has spared no expense in creating the ideal rig for home use. The impressive build comes with AMD’s powerful Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, two GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards, a speedy Intel Optane SSD, and a total of 128 GB RAM. Along with an assortment of other high-end components, the builder decided to integrate a total of 47 case fans.

Two possible NVIDIA Ampere GPUs with high CUDA Cores and memory capacities were spotted on the Geekbench 5 OpenCL benchmarking site. One of the GPUs with 7,552 CUDA Cores and 24 GB RAM scored 184,096 points in OpenCL beating the Titan RTX by nearly 39%. These GPUs are likely to be datacenter parts and are specced lower than the full GA100 Ampere chip.

Not satisfied with third or fourth generation PCI Express speeds? Leapfrogging 5.0, the latest revision of PCI Express has been released for prototype designs ahead of its final launch in 2021. Featuring 4 times the bandwidth of PCIe 4.0, it may be a while before the standard reaches consumer products.

A few samples of AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 3990X have started appearing on PassMark and the results have been outstanding. The 64-core monster unsurprisingly shot straight to the top of the CPU Mark chart, which is already dominated by AMD processors. The nearest Intel rival, the Xeon W-3275M, languishes over 20,000 points behind in eighth place.

Intel laid off 129 employees from its Data Center Group, even after excellent Q4 2019 financial performance. Could AMD's server market presence have been a factor?

If you want to get the absolute best laptop configurations, try out the new Eurocom Sky X9C with 4K 17.3-inch display, desktop-grade I9-9900K CPU, up to 128 GB DDR4-2666 DRAM, dual RTX 2080 GPU and up to 28 TB of SSD storage via 3x M.2-2282 slots + 2X 2.5-inch bays.

Some specifications for the upcoming Microsoft Surface Book 3 and Microsoft Surface Go 2 have been leaked online. The Surface Book 3 convertible can expect to sport 10th Gen Intel processors and GPUs from Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 16 series lineup. The Surface Go 2 is rumored to be getting a low-end chip that could be Pentium Gold branded or Core M.

NVIDIA has now completed its fiscal 2020, which ended on January 26 this year. It has reported revenues of just over US$3 billion for its last quarter (4FQ2020), or 41% greater compared to 4FQ2019. The company's CEO has attributed this success to its "accelerated computing" concerns.

A leaked Geekbench listing for Intel's upcoming Ice Lake server parts shows massive performance gains. The 12-core Ice Lake server ES delivers nearly the same multithreaded performance as a 24-core Cascade Lake part.

Leaked GPU and HBM clocks for the Radeon Instinct MI100 paint a grim picture: AMD's upcoming HPC contender will likely be slower than Nvidia's existing HPC parts. With Ampere arriving in a few months, the MI100 may be dead on arrival.

Today (February 4, 2020) Samsung has unveiled its latest memory solution for the high-performance computing (HPC) market. It is a form of state-of-the-art high bandwidth memory 2E (HBM2E) with 16GB of capacity per chip. This doubles the specification of its previous generation, and is owed to its new DRAM die layout.

Geekbench is the latest synthetic benchmark to experience the processing power of AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, with the 64-core monster tearing the multi-core test to shreds. However, the incredible score of 22,045 points still left it trailing its Castle Peak brethren, the Threadripper 3970X, and the Intel workstation processor Xeon W-3175X.

The GPU Technology Conference (or GTC) 2020 has been set to begin on March 23 of this year. It will open with a keynote from NVIDIA's CEO and founder, Jensen Huang. The company also claims there will be over 1000 other speakers from various organisations across over 600 sessions at the 3-day event.

An engineering sample of an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X has turned up on UserBenchmark and offered up huge scores that still have room for improvement. The 64-core part was a component in a system that also featured the Prime TRX40-Pro motherboard from Asus and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. Unsurprisingly, the measured 64-core score was massive.

ChargeLabs has designed the HyperDisk to be a tiny external drive housing super-fast memory. This OEM claims that it has read-speeds of up to 960 megabytes per second (MB/s) and write-speeds of 920MB/s. It comes in 512GB, 1TB and 2TB SKUs, and has attracted over US$600,000 of crowd-funded backing.

8K is the next up-and-coming thing in display-tech standards. However, devices that support it may only be so effective at showing it without compatible, high-quality cables. The company Austere has put just such a product on the market.

PNY has launched a new version of its 48GB NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 graphics card. This one, however, lacks a fan of any kind. Nevertheless, the OEM asserts that it is still capable of a memory bandwidth of 624 gigabytes per second (GB/s) and 14.9 TFLOPS of FP32 performance.

AMD has just announced the release of the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition (20.1.2). It confers support for Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, as well as Vulkan 1.2. It also fixes a problem for some UE4-based games in which they could not load under its predecessor.

Intel has announced a shake-up in its line of Xeon scalable processors. The OEM will cease sales of the M variants of these server-grade SoCs (the Xeon Platinum 8280M, for example) will. However, their L (the Platinum 8280L, and so on) counterparts will take their place in this tier of chipsets.

Apple has started selling the Mac Pro in a server-friendly rack-mountable form factor. While the internals of the new model are the same as the tower Mac Pro, the rack-mount design runs an extra US $500.

The official page for the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X processor has gone live. Many of the details about the HEDT chip were already revealed at CES 2020 but now the powerful 64-core desktop CPU has its own home to boast of. AMD is advertising the Threadripper 3990X as the “One Processor to Render Them All”.

AMD has launched the 64-core 128-thread Threadripper 3990X at CES 2020. The new HEDT processor is the world's most powerful CPU for content creators and can boost up to 4.3 GHz in a 280W TDP envelope. The Threadripper 3990X will be available from February 7 for US$3,990 SEP.

Mini-LED backlighting is the next big thing in consumer TV sets and MSI will be the first to integrate the technology onto laptops with the upcoming 17.3-inch Creator 17 designed for professional users.

At CES 2020, Acer is introducing new PCs in the ConceptD lineup aimed at creative pros. The ConceptD 7 Ezel is a convertible with the Ezel hinge featuring a 10th gen Intel H-series processor, NVIDIA RTX GPU, and up to 32 GB of RAM. There is also a ConceptD 7 Ezel Pro with a choice of Intel Xeon and NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs. Alongside the new convertibles, Acer has also announced the ConceptD 700 desktop workstation with modern looks and specs to match that include the Intel Xeon E and NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000.

Lenovo has new gaming peripherals to debut at CES 2020. The Legion K300 is an entry-level RGB keyboard, while the Legion M300 is an equally budget-friendly mouse. The M600, on the other hand, is a USB type C wireless mouse touted as having the same 1000 hertz (Hz) polling rate as its wired counterparts.

Dell's new line-up of UltraSharp monitors are all USB type-C this year. They are headlinded by the 43-inch U4320Q, a 4K panel that can be split between up to 4 separate devices via the OEM's Picture-by-Picture (PBP) feature. There are also 27- and 25-inch models in this year's productivity-focused screen series.