Workstation

At the ongoing VMworld 2018 conference in Las Vegas, AMD announced the Radeon Pro V340 dual-GPU for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) applications. The Radeon Pro V340 can power demanding datacenter workloads such as CAD, rendering, and Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) applications. The V340 can support up to 32 VMs, each with its own independent memory access for extra security along with support for independently compressing H.264 and H.265 video streams.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) are not just for individuals trying to get around geo-restrictions. Companies may also use them to streamline their online connections. However, a managing director for a UK IT and networking company thinks an emerging alternative is about to make these VPNs obsolete.

Will the GTX name live on for gaming laptops after Pascal? Eurocom will soon be updating its high-end Sky series of laptops to support both Coffee Lake Intel CPUs and mobile Turing.

Announced roughly one week ago, the new Lenovo ThinkPad P1 is already orderable on Lenovo's US website. The new 15.6 inch mobile workstation is supposed to compete with the Dell XPS 15 and its workstation cousin, the Dell Precision 5530.

The new monster processor from AMD might find its way to the list of hardware options available for the Alienware Area-51 desktop gaming PC, but this depends entirely on its level of gaming performance this chip can reach. For now, Alienware and AMD fans should keep their fingers crossed and just wait.

Phoronix has done a performance comparison of the AMD Threadripper 2990WX in Windows 10 Pro and Linux and the results show Threadripper numbers significantly lower under Windows 10 Pro than in Linux. In some tests such as 7-Zip Compression, the Threadripper 2990WX posted almost 58% higher scores in Linux compared to Windows 10 Pro implying that Linux is a better OS of choice when testing high core count CPUs.

On August 13 at Siggraph Nvidia announced its new Turing based RTX Quadro GPUs, designed to process real time ray tracing. The full Turing GPU is the second biggest in the world (the first being Volta) and it is the world's first GPU with ray tracing functionality built in. The new RTX Quadro lineup will be arriving in Q4 or sooner.

AMD's Threadripper 2990WX has finally launched, and it is officially the fastest CPU in the world. With 32 cores, 64 threads, and an all core frequency of 3.4 GHz, it's a monstrous CPU. However, the path to 32 cores on the desktop is paved with compromises and some disappointments.

The NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs implement Samsung's latest 16 Gigabit GDDR6 memory. The enhanced bandwidth of GDDR6 helps in improved performance and memory efficiency while consuming 35% less power. The Quadro RTX is the first product to implement Samsung's GDDR6 VRAM.

Macs are more or less impervious to hacking, right? Not any more, according to two cybersecurity researchers during a briefing at the Black Hat USA Conference 2018. However, the attacks involved are difficult to achieve and need to be launched at very specific times during the computer's set-up.

MSI has announced a new mobile workstation for creatives. The WS65 is a professional makeover for the GS65 Stealth Thin and comes with processor options up to the Intel Core i9-8950HK and GPU options up to the NVIDIA Quadro P4200. The MSI WS65 will be on display during SIGGRAPH 2018 and is expected to be available from September.

Apart from introducing their thinnest mobile workstation ThinkPad yet, Lenovo updated their most powerful ThinkPad laptop today as well. The new ThinkPad P72 ditches the DVD drive and opts for a thinner chassis, while also offering far more powerful GPU options than any other ThinkPad, up to the Nvidia Quadro P5200.

The Xeon processors employed by data centers in various artificial intelligence applications provided Intel with over US$1 billion in revenue in 2017, and the future looks even better. According to the company's officials, the data-centric businesses can provide a market worth US$200 billion in 2022.

AMD has announced that its latest HEDT CPUs, the Ryzen Threadripper 2, are available for pre-order starting today for a retail launch on August 13. The second generation Ryzen Threadrippers come in multiple SKUs targeting different segments of the enthusiast gaming and content creation market with prices starting from US$649 for the Threadripper 2920X and going all the way up to US$1,799 for the Threadripper 2990WX.

AMD will be supplying new Wraith Ripper coolers designed by Coolermaster that will allow the Threadripper 2990X to hit 4 GHz on all 32 cores on air. This was demonstrated during an AMD event recently held in Maranello, Italy. Getting all 32-cores to boost to 4 GHz on air is a commendable feat, which implies much higher boosts on single and fewer cores.

Its still not clear when Lenovo will announce the upcoming ThinkPad P1 – but an official release might be in sight, as two new official renders of the ThinkPad P1, a thinner 15-inch workstation laptop, have appeared on the internet.

Leaked slides have revealed that Intel's 9th generation 'Coffee Lake-S Refresh' CPUs such as the Core i9-9900K will be available from Q1 2019. This comes as a surprise as we've been expecting a September 2018 launch so far. The slides also indicate that new 'Cascade Lake X' CPUs will debut by Q4 2018 as anticipated.

The 32-core 64-thread AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990X gets a listing on CanadaComputers for CA$2,399 or around US$1,835. This is in line with the Cyberport listing last month that showed the price at €1,509. The listing also shows that the new Threadrippers will sport the same retail packaging as the previous generation.

Owners of the iMac Pro and the new 2018 MacBook Pro have turned to Apple forums to report several instances of kernel panics, which trace back to BridgeOS found in the Apple T2 chip. The T2 chip provides support for secure boot, encrypted storage, and the always-on 'Hey Siri' command. Apple is apparently aware but has not publicly acknowledged the issue so an estimated date for a fix is not yet known.

According to a leak roadmap presented by Intel at the Chinese University of Changsha City, The Ice Lake scalable processors were pushed to 2020 due to some 10 nm fabrication process issues. Meanwhile, Intel will launch the Copper Lake scalable Xeon CPUs a few months before the Ice Lake family. The roadmap also shows the 28-core Cascade Lake HPC CPU scheduled for an early 2019 release.

Details of new 8-core 16-thread Intel Coffee Lake CPUs have leaked online. The top-end Core i9-9900K can boost up to 5 GHz out of the box and has a TDP of 95W. The other SKUs in the lineup include the 8-core Core i7-9700K and the 6-core Core i5-9600K both without Hyperthreading.

The fourth generation Z2 Mini workstation series from HP is bringing refreshed specs like the Intel 8000-series desktop CPUs and the more advanced Xeon E 2100-series for professional designers. The new SFF systems support up to 32 GB of DDR4 RAM, up to 1 TB NVMe SSDs, Intel Optane memory and up to 1 TB SATA HDDs, plus a choice between Nvidia’s Quadro P600/P100 and AMD’s Radeon Pro WX 4150 GPUs.

Intel has taken wraps off its new Xeon E-2100 entry-level workstation processor family. The 6C/12T Xeon E-2100 is a derivative of the 14nm++ 'Coffee Lake' architecture and is tailored for creative professionals looking at a low-cost workstation CPU that offers improved single-threaded performance along with faster DRAM and higher PCIe lane counts.

"Doorbuster" style deals will be in effect until the end of this month for select Latitude, Inspiron, Alienware, XPS, and G series laptops. The timings of these sales are confusingly staggered and we recommend checking out our shortened list for the details.

While the 10 nm process continues to be delayed, Intel prepares more new CPUs that are still produced in an optimized 14 nm process. This means that Intel will continue to increase the number of CPU cores increase the performance. Next year, octa core CPUs are expected to arrive in laptops for the first time.

Startup firm Tachyum's Prodigy is being billed as a Universal Processor Platform that claims to deliver over 10x performance over conventional CPUs in the Hyperscale Data Center market. The company claims that it can outperform the competition in AI applications and that it needs just about 250,000 of these chips to rival the human brain.

Since a few months, the name "ThinkPad P1" has been a mystery. Today, a first picture emerged, which shows a ThinkPad with a 15.6-inch screen without a numpad. Potentially, this could be Lenovo's competitor to the Dell XPS 15 and the Dell Precision 5530.

AMD's upcoming HEDT processor, the 32C/64T Ryzen Threadripper 2990X has been spotted in the 3DMark database. While the entry does not show any performance score, it does show lower boost clocks owning to probably a non-XFR2 motherboard. Also, the pricing of the CPU was inadvertently leaked by a European online retailer. At just over Euro 1500, the Ryzen Threadripper 2990X could give Intel's 28-core chip a run for its money.

AMD has discretely revealed the Radeon PRO V340 — a dual Vega 10 multi-GPU card with 32 GB HBM2 memory. The Radeon PRO V340 is being targeted for virtualization applications with support for up to 32 concurrent users and hardware encode capabilities for H.264 and H.265 video while providing a built-in security processor for isolating the virtualized environment from the cloud provider.

The ThinkPad T, X, and P families are home to Lenovo's more well-known models including the 14-inch T480, 15-inch T580, X380 convertible, and 15-inch P52 workstation. While their design, features, and performance are generally very well received, many may be unfit for users who are sensitive to flickering lights. Be wary when purchasing the following ThinkPad models.

With the announcement of the ThinkPad P52 a few days ago, Lenovo also announced a crucial accessory, a new dock. But the company didn't release too many details about this dock, besides is name. Thanks to the ThinkPad P52 manuals, we can now take a closer look at this new dock and its specifications.

Apparently, the Zbox Q workstation mini PCs were quite the hit and Zotac now intends to release an updated version by the end of 2018. Zotac will only add a newer i7-8700T six-core CPU (plus a new motherboard) and a faster 10 GbE NIC to the already powerful specs that include Nvidia's Quadro P5000 16 GB VRAM GPU, NVMe + SATA storage combos and up to 32 GB of DDR4 RAM.

Lenovo launches the first model of its well-known ThinkPad-line of laptops with the new Intel Coffee-Lake hexa-core processors. The new ThinkPad P52 is not only the first ThinkPad workstation with those new CPUs, its also Lenovo's first VR-ready mobile workstation in the more compact 15.6-inch size with the new Nvidia Quadro P3200.

Apparently, Intel's 28-core CPU presentation from Computex was not really accurate, as the company tried to pull a few tricks on the audience. Anandtech meanwhile got some answers from Intel, revealing that the demo CPU was pre-overclcocked to 5 GHz. Moreover, the chip is designed for extreme workstations, so this was not the HEDT Cascade Lake-X CPU.

AMD demonstrated the world's first 7nm GPU architecture at Computex 2018. The Radeon Instinct series of accelerators are made for High Performance Compute (HPC) applications and feature 32 GB HBM2 memory on a 4096-bit bus. The 7nm Vega GPUs are currently being sampled with targeted availability in 2H 2018.

HP has released reports for the fiscal 2018 second quarter results, and it seems to have been a good financial quarter overall for the California-based company. Net revenue was US$14 billion and GAAP net earnings stood at US$1.1 billion. HP’s results topped a Wall Street prediction of US$13.57 billion for net revenue.

Quinn of YouTube channel Snazzy Labs recently posted a video of Apple's poor repair of his iMac Pro. While attempting to repair a damaged VESA mount, the repair technicians at an Apple Store severely damaged the original stand of Quinn's iMac Pro and scratched the body of the machine in a few places.

The market for premium laptops has been growing in recent years, with thin and powerful 15-inch laptops like the Dell XPS 15 or Apple MacBook Pro 15 as one of the growth-segments. Reason enough for HP to release the new EliteBook 1050 G1, which offers a hexa-core CPU and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 in a thin 15-inch chassis.

The Vostro 15 5000 gets a 40 percent price cut with a free Western Digital HDD thrown in for good measure on some deals. The promotion includes systems with 8th gen Intel Core ix CPUs as well. The timing of the price cuts are in line with the recent announcements of a refresh across the Precision and Wyse Thin Client families set to launch towards the end of the month.

Initially planned for launch in 2016, Intel has delayed the launch of the 10nm based next-generation 'Cannon Lake' CPUs to 2019, which the company announced in their first-quarter earnings report of 2018. It is not the first time Intel has delayed 10nm process-based CPUs; furthermore, there is no mention of as to when in 2019 will Intel release 'Cannon Lake' chips.

The AMD processors that will probably hit the market soon were recently spotted in the official product master list available on AMD.com. In addition to the dual-core and quad-core desktop and mobile Ryzen processors, there are also three Threadrippers: the octa-core 2900X, the 12-core 2920X, and the 16-core 2950X.

Today, Dell announced the newest generation of the Precision mobile workstation line. The core of that lineup are the two traditional workstation-models Precision 7530 and Precision 7730, which are being updated with the lastest GPUs, CPUs, more RAM and also a new chassis-design.