Supermicro, a first-tier server vendor worldwide, has been aggressively developing gaming-related products with its experience from the server business. Supermicro is able to offer customers products with server quality.Digitimes recently talked with Supermicro's senior application system product manager Steve Lee and senior product manager Tony Fan about the company's gaming business.Q: How long has Supermicro been in the gaming motherboard business?Lee: We have been developing gaming motherboards for five years. In fact, Supermicro has been in the motherboard business for around 20 years already, but has mostly focused on consumer, server and embedded solutions.Recently, with gaming applications growing popular, Supermicro also crossed into the development of the related product lines. However, in addition to customers from the PC DIY market, we have seen growing demand from the enterprise sector as customers from the field are building desktops using Intel's top-end CPUs and need reliable motherboards to unleash the CPUs' full potential.All our gaming motherboards are equipped with server-grade components and designs to optimize the stability of the systems, making our gaming motherboards the top pick for our customers.We currently have several business models for selling our gaming motherboards including cooperating with system integrators, specific regional channel retailers and e-commerce platforms.In Taiwan, we work with a local channel retailer CoolPC to sell gaming and server motherboards, while in the US our motherboards can be found on both Amazon and Newegg. However, partnering with system integrators is still the main business direction for Supermicro's gaming business.Q: What direction is Supermicro planning to push its development to?Lee: We have seen many brand vendors in the gaming market shifting their development to features that make products more appealing to customers, such as adding support of RGB lights to hardware and peripherals.This is a growing trend in the gaming market, but Supermicro at the moment will still focus on maintaining products' high quality, performance and reliability, as these are what Supermicro's customers are mainly looking for.Q: Does Supermicro manufacture its gaming desktop in house?Lee: Supermicro is collaborating with peripheral makers including Thermaltake and Lian Li for desktop and chassis product lines.Supermicro has co-developed two liquid-cooling gaming desktops with Thermaltake that are currently available in the US channels. The company's chassis co-designed with Lian Li was showcased at Computex 2019.Q: Does Supermicro's gaming products have any advantages over competitors?Fang: Supermicro is designing its gaming motherboards with a concept 100% identical to designing server motherboards. Our gaming motherboards are all equipped with server-grade components that are provided by a sole supplier in order to keep quality stable.To make every gaming motherboard with the same quality is the goal that Supermicro has been looking to achieve and by choosing only one supplier, the company is looking to avoid the concern on the tolerance discrepancy of the components.For example, Supermicro's gaming motherboards use high-quality PCBs with extra layers, which are the same as those used in server motherboards. Although the such motherboards are pricier than regular ones with fewer layers, they provide better and more reliable electrons transmission via circuit.In addition, several of our gaming motherboards are also equipped with server-grade remote management chip from ASpeed Technology and Supermicro has a team of 300 software engineers to help customers manage their systems via the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) feature. Customers can also obtain assistance via their smartphones.Thanks to Supermicro's expertise in server motherboard design, some of Supermicro's gaming motherboards can support up to a total of four graphics cards with the addition of a PCIe switches chip to expand the motherboard's Lane support.Supermicro senior application system product manager Steve Lee (left) and senior product manager Tony Fan (right)Photo: Joseph Tsai, Digitimes, July 2019

Since British technology pioneer Kevin Ashton coined the term "Internet of Things" in 1999, IoT development has undergone several stages including "terminal connection" and "platform analysis" before being integrated with artificial intelligence (AI) into the current AIoT, achieving multiple applications in diverse domains such as smart home, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), and smart manufacturing. In future combination with 5G, AIoT will penetrate into more vertical markets faster to generate immense business opportunities by leveraging 5G's broad bandwidth, low latency and huge connectivity.At the IoT Innovative Developments Forum organized by Digitimes during Computex 2019, speakers from many leading firms - from diverse sectors, including cloud service, industrial PC, e-paper, testing and validation service, and semiconductor - provided insights into IoT development.IoT applications cannot be materialized without the combined support of bottom-layer sensors, middle-layer gateways and upper-layer cloud platforms, with every node requiring semiconductor technology to serve as the development basis.Sahil Bansal, senior director of product management at Qualcomm, noted that the firm's Vision Intelligence Platform integrates such elements as image signal processor (ISP), high-speed AI engine, machine learning and computer vision software development kit (SDK), generating more space for imagination about the applications of robots, industrial cameras, wearable cameras and VR cameras.Robert Chang, associate director for IoT market development at Avnet Asia, stressed that hardware devices alone are not sufficient to support whole IoT application scenarios, and therefore his company has been aggressively developing cloud data, AI and IoT PaaS platforms, seeking to build one-stop service niches and help clients accelerate design, development, volume production and sales deployment of IoT products.KiPhone Lin, associate vice president of IPC maker Advantech, opined that the forces of ecosystem partners count greatly in bringing AIoT applications into full play.Kyle Lee, deputy director of IoT PM division at E Ink Holdings, also noted that electronic paper, featuring low power consumption, visibility under the sun, super-wide viewing angle and flexibility, can serve as best displays in many IoT application environments.David Feng, intelligent cloud & edge lead at Microsoft, emphasized that IoT projects are usually very complicated, and comprehensive smart cross-cloud and edge-to-device architectures are badly needed to simplify the complexity.Arvin Ho, vice general manager at TUV Rheinland Taiwan, reminded that IoT device developers must select proper networking technologies or their devices may need to undergo renewed testing and validation processes.In analyzing the evolution of global IoT ecosystems in 2019, Jim Haiso, an analyst at Digitimes Research, pointed out that the ever-expanding cellular networks, LPWA (low power wide area) networks, IEC 62443-4-2 safety standards and IoT platform ecosystems will be a trend deserving great attention.IoT Innovative Developments Forum organized by Digitimes during Computex 2019Photo: Michael Lee, Digitimes, May 2019

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies have struggled to gain footholds in other niches to the world of cloud computing, but Nvidia is aiming to take it to the next level and rapidly change the face of businesses over the next few years. A new trend of AI based enterprise applications is on the rise, and it is one that creates a new market from the cloud to the edge. Today, the AI inference is used in search engines, streaming video services like Netflix and by AI assistants such as Alexa. Nvidia has announced both mainstream servers designed to enable AI computing in data center and edge servers designed to enable AI at the edge powered by Nvidia GPUs and software.In this interview during Computex 2019 with Paresh Kharya, Nvidia's director of Product Marketing, talks about Nvidia solutions in the cloud and new development in the edge. He is working with customers and partners to deliver the end-to-end solutions powered by Nvidia AI and deep learning technologies. Meanwhile, Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft will team up to implement the technology into its software stacks for developers looking to take advantage of accelerated machine learning tasks both in the cloud and the edge.Nvidia T4 GPU enabled mainstream servers dealing with scaling problemsThe new servers are equipped with Nvidia's T4 GPUs running on the company's Turing architecture; this powerful hardware combined with Nvidia's CUDA-X AI libraries enables businesses and enterprises to more efficiently handle AI-based tasks, machine learning, data analytics, and virtual desktops. Designed for the data center, the Tesla T4 GPUs draw only 70 watts of power during operation. Companies offering the new servers include several big server brands in the beginning and now there are more than 30 server OEM/ODMs building the systems in the market.The Nvidia T4 is a new product based on the latest Turing architecture, delivering increased efficiency on any mainstream enterprise server. However, it is not a replacement for the previous bigger and more powerful GPUs like Nvidia V100 which are designed for specialized scale-up servers for AI training and HPC. Instead, it offers good performance while consuming very little power and has a lower price tag. This approach will help rapid deployment of popular AI-enabled applications like speech AI-based customer support, cyber security, smart retail, smart manufacturing among others using previously trained machine learning models .Nvidia EGX platform to bring low latency AI on the edgeOn the other hand, with billions of IoT sensors being used by enterprises and generating huge volumes of data, there is a strong demand to process the data for business insights. Kharya mentioned that to be most useful for decision making the data needs to be processed with AI in real-time. The edge computing technology allows data produced by sensor devices to be processed closer to where it is created instead of sending it across long routes to the clouds. Edge computing complements the cloud and enables customers to do AI computing for automation even when network connection is weak or lost. Nvidia announced a scalable platform named EGX that allows enterprises to easily deploy systems to meet their AI computing needs on premises in the edge. Kharya highlights that the edge servers like those in the EGX platform will be distributed throughout the world to process data in real time from these sensors.EGX servers start with Nvidia Jetson Nano-based micro servers, which consume only a few watts and can provide one-half trillion operations per second (TOPS) of processing for tasks such as image recognition. Kharya showcased the system board for accommodating eight camera devices in the smart traffic management solutions. For more powerful performance, EGX spans all the way to a full rack of Nvidia T4 servers, delivering more than 10,000 TOPS for real-time speech recognition and other real-time AI tasks.To simplify management of AI applications on distributed servers with enterprise-grade software, Nvidia released Edge Stack software suite. Nvidia Edge Stack is optimized software that provides container-based application management and includes Nvidia drivers, a CUDA Kubernetes plugin, a CUDA container runtime, CUDA-X libraries and containerized AI frameworks and applications, including TensorRT, TensorRT Inference Server and DeepStream. Meanwhile, Nvidia has partnered with Red Hat to integrate and optimize Edge Stack with OpenShift.The NGC-ready Validation programFeaturing Nvidia T4 or V100 GPUs and fine-tuned to run Nvidia CUDA-X AI acceleration libraries, these servers create a new class of enterprise servers for AI and data analytics with greater utility and versatility. For expanding the places users of powerful systems with Nvidia GPUs can deploy GPU-accelerated software with confidence, Nvidia setup NGC-Ready server validation program. It includes AI and HPC software tested as part of the NGC-Ready validation process. Nvidia NGC provides a bunch of GPU-accelerated software, pre-trained AI models, model training for data analytics, machine learning, deep learning and high-performance computing accelerated by CUDA-X AI.The NGC-Ready program features a select set of systems powered by Nvidia GPUs with Tensor Cores that are ideal for a wide range of AI workloads. The same approach will apply to the edge computing solutions. Nvidia Edge Stack is optimized for certified servers and downloadable from the Nvidia NGC registry. For businesses interested in the deployment of applications from edge to the cloud, customers will be able to connect to AWS Greengrass or Microsoft Azure IoT cloud platforms, allowing for easy scalability depending on the required tasks.Nvidia EGX edge stackNvidia EGX computing platform from Nano to T4

France's data protection authority CNIL issued an announcement in January 2019 imposing a fine equivalent to NT$1.76 billion on Google for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforced by the EU. Besides traditional information risks facing individual industries, the ordinary people must also be aware of the data safety listed below and associated with innovative industry chains in the emerging digital economy era, namely web services, social networking and encrypted tokens.Web servicesBased on the traffic monetization business model seen in popular web services, many innovation startups have launched a variety of web content for access by netizens and attract them to stay, so that they can utilize personal data of consumers and multiple data accumulated from diverse online behavior to make profits from conducting ads push notification in cooperation with other firms. In the web service access process, the lack of transparency in handling personal data and notification of content that is either too simple or too complicated will lead to major legal disputes and huge potential damages.Social networkingIn various future digital scenarios, the mainstream applications will be ones that allow consumers to do shopping, conduct financial wealth management, enjoy entertainment and arrange transportation through social network platforms. It is expected that both the reliance of global netizens on social network platforms and the boost to peripheral digital applications will intensify. Of course, various digital footprints resulting from such a lifestyle will incur high economic values, which will surely be highly coveted by cyber hackers and should be strongly protected.Encrypted tokenIn line with various forms of digital tokenization trend, startups have recently been keen to engage in related R&D projects. As long as they are in the electronic form, any type of token, whether payment token, function token or securities token, will be exposed to the risk of cyber attacks in the issuance, exchange and storage processes of the token ecosystem. Amid drastic price falls for virtual currencies, the number of cyber attacks through the planting of malware will decline sharply. Nevertheless, extortions using asymmetric encryption algorithms to hijack or affect digital token operations are expected to increase steeply.The Internet era where data was valued more than privacy has gone, and various countries in the world will now establish new global digital economy norms based on diverse data processing, information security and privacy protection regulations. Google still received a huge fine from CNIL ticket though it did not leak any piece of personal data. This clearly motivates startups eager to develop emerging technologies to give more efforts to protect the consumers' rights to know how their personal data is utilized in the future development of digital technologies, in addition to handling basic data security issues such as firewall and encryption algorithms. This is the true lesson to be learnt from the Google fine.(Jason Hsieh is executive vice president and leader of Cryptoassets and Token Economy Taskforce of KPMG in Taiwan)

Colorful has recently announced the new 2019 addition to its gaming motherboard product family, iGame Z390 Vulcan X, powered by the Intel Z390 chipset. The flagship motherboard features 14-Phase iGame Pure Power and full tantalum capacitors with longer service life compared to conventional capacitors, high temperature resistance, high precision and superb high-frequency filter performance to better guarantee the overclocking stability of the 9th generation Intel processor.On the CPU power supply module, Colorful uses the Silver Shark 2.0 Cooling Armor with a whole new "Shark Bionics" look. The designs of "Branchial cleft" and metal lamination on the cooling armor enables air flow in the sealed case for better heat dissipation.Memory slots on the motherboard are protected with 15μ gold-plated slot design. It ensures integrity of slot contacts and prevents arc wounding, adhesion, oxidation contacts and other problems caused by electric shocks during power-on or power-off. It also supports XMP memory automatic overclocking technology.With their unique GamerVoice recently upgraded to version 3.0, the iGame series motherboards use Realtek ALC 1220 sound cards and Japanese HIFI audio capacitors as well as an audio cut-off line design on the audio section of the motherboard. The signal IO interface uses gold-plated non-magnetic jacks to reduce signal loss during transmission, achieving a 120dB signal-to-noise ratio to drive 600-ohmage impedance headphones.The iGame Z390 Vulcan X motherboard is geared with Intel's latest 219 network adapter to ease the CPU workload as well as Intel's premium CVNi AC9560 wireless network interface controller, which supports 2x2 MU-MIMO and the 160MHz frequency band. The theoretical bandwidth of 5Hz frequency band can reach 1.733Gbps. Bluetooth 5.0 is also supported.iGame Z390 Vulcan X

ViewSonic, a leading global provider of visual solutions, will showcase at their Asia Pacific headquarters during Computex 2019 in Taipei.Total solutions for education and corporations will be showcased including ViewBoard interactive displays with enhanced collaboration and myViewBoard collaborative digital whiteboard software. In addition, a full line up of ViewSonic's latest products including the new touch monitors, advanced ergonomic workplace displays, gaming monitors, as well as the new X Series of smart 4K Ultra HD LED home entertainment projectors, will also be available to be experienced.myViewBoard digital whiteboard ecosystemmyViewBoard digital whiteboard ecosystem delivers the digital whiteboard experience over multiple platforms. With an open-source design embedded, myViewBoard ecosystem supports Google and Microsoft integration, making it adaptable to any school or institution regardless of operating system. The addition of a mobile app facilitates sign-in and allows quick access to all the documents in the cloud drive.myViewBoard ecosystem integrates into any meeting space, supporting multi-location screen sharing from a huddle space to a large conference venue. In addition, its multi-factor authentication feature meets the highest digital data security standards. myViewBoard on-boarding process allows IT professionals to securely integrate with Azure Active Directory and Google single sign-on for great functionality including user deployment and device management.Brand new ViewBoard series with advanced touch technologyTo offer users a smooth, responsive touch and writing experience, ViewSonic will present a new generation of ViewBoard, the award-winning interactive displays with various advanced touch technologies that match users' natural writing style.The all new flagship IFP70 series comes with PCAP touch technology that provides high touch detection accuracy and light transmittance, offering the best user experience of all the touch technologies. This display integrates a Microsoft Azure digital twin smart sensor hub, camera, Skype for Business, and IPv6 network protocol to provide the smart building integration. The IFP70 also comes with a smart active pen for a rich interactive experience; making it a great collaboration interactive display for corporate usage.The ViewSonic IFP60 Series incorporates in-glass touch, security authentication and rich collaboration tools, earning it a place in the finalist pool of the 2019 InAVation Awards in the "Collaboration and Conferencing - Interactive Display Product" category. The IFP60 series' built-in FIPS201-certified biometric recognition system prevents unauthorised attempts to access user accounts while also allowing users to login easily without having to type in their passwords.The new 2019 ViewSonic IFP50 series comes with advanced ultra fine touch technology that, with its slim IR touch, is twice faster than the traditional IR technology and has better pen tip accuracy. Besides a 4K Ultra HD resolution and a 20-point touch-enabled panel, the new 2019 IFP50 series also has an Android 7.0 operating system and provides dual-pen annotation. Two independent pens double the learning possibilities and each pen can be set to its own colour, width, and transparency, and can switch between writing styles using the thin and thick nibs at the end of each pen.The X series LED projectorsViewSonic's new generation of X series 4K UHD lamp free smart theatre projectors include the X10-4K, X100-4K and X1000-4K, covering three different throw ratios. The X series LED projectors deploy second generation, mercury free LED technology that offer longevity, integrate dual Harmon-Kardon speakers and keep abreast of smart functionality trend with wireless miracasting and Bluetooth capability, Alexa and Google Assistant voice control technology and a smart TV interface to access and stream popular apps of your choice. The ViewSonic X series LED projectors are built using a DLP 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) chip with XPR technology and offer HDR10 content support to deliver incredibly detailed video playback, contrast and vivid colour. With the added technology of ViewSonic's proprietary Cinema SuperColor+ technology reaching over 125% of Rec.709 colour accuracy and frame interpolation technology that reduces motion blur.ViewSonic to deliver solutions for education and business

The first case of initial coin offering (ICO) appeared in 2017, generating much interest and new financing opportunities. But many ICO teams have declared failures or vanished soon after completing fundraising operations due to lack of government supervision. To revive the sluggish market sentiment, industry players have called for regulatory supervision over the securities token offering (STO).In response to the call, Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has announced that it will formulate relevant regulations by the end of June, and it already hosted on April 12 a public hearing session for representatives from the industry, government, and academic sectors to express their opinions on draft regulatory rules.The move received a lot of media attention. Indeed, the FSC is worthy of praise for daring to map out a brand-new bill governing the emerging STO business operations. But since the full text of the draft bill was not available at the public hearing, some of the points may deserve more attention or need to be clearly explained. The following are three preliminary suggestions for the writing of a law in the direction of "developing a sound STO, conducting efficient supervision, and building international connection." It is hoped that Taiwan's STO market can take off and grab future international financing opportunities for STOs.Introducing an additional international STO version to govern issuances by foreign companies or overseas fundraising activitiesThe draft bill available at the public hearing confines STO issuers to companies in Taiwan, excluding offshore firms. As STO technology boasts the trait of facilitating cross-nation fundraising operation, it is advisable that besides the current domestic version of the STO draft bill, an international version should be devised to govern STO issuance by foreign companies or to simply regulate overseas fundraising. The international version must also include relevant procedures such as those for registration to facilitate overall management and help access and develop international markets, so as to effectively boost international visibility of Taiwan's STO developmentMeanwhile, the draft bill stipulates that any dedicated STO investor is required to have a minimum wealth of NT$30 million, but sets maximum STO subscription amount at only NT$100,000. Most attendees at the public hearing regarded the wealth bar as too high and the subscription ceiling too low. The draft stipulations observe the international practices that STOs are less open to retail investors; and to safeguard the interests of investors, the FSC adopts the high criteria for dedicated investors by taking reference from the regulations governing offshore structured products. But the draft bill should also consider flexible credit lines as set for margin trading and short selling of marketable securities. In accordance with different risk tolerance capabilities of different investors, the minimum wealth requirement criteria and the maximum subscription amount can be flexibly adjusted along with risk degrees, so as to fulfill the purpose of protecting investors on the one hand and to develop the securities token-based capital market and attract international funds on the other hand.Clarifying the relationship between STO platform operators and issuersThe draft bill requires STO issuers to channel their issuances through STO platform operators (securities dealers). But what about the relationship between platform operators and issuers - total underwriting or commissioned underwriting? The answer cannot be found from the public information. The draft bill asks, on the one hand, STO platform operators to screen the regulatory compliance by issuers in launching securities tokens on the platforms. And it also allows, on the other hand, the operators to engage in STO trading after completing the screening process by offering quotes based on market conditions to profit from the spread between token buying and selling prices. Do the dual roles played by platform operators contradict each other? Furthermore, the existing draft regulations also blur the boundary between the primary and the secondary STO markets. Accordingly, the regulator should incorporate the role of an intermediary into the draft bill and the relationship between STO platform operators and issuers be further clarified and clearly stated.Innovativeness of financial regulatory sandboxIn case of the STO fundraising amount exceeding NT$30 million, the draft bill stipulates that the issuer must enter the financial regulatory sandbox experimentation, for which a so-called "innovativeness" is required. Accordingly, if there is only one issuer applying for entering the sandbox experimentation, other issuers cannot develop the same or similar business until the issuer completes its experimentation. In order to accelerate multiple developments of the STO industry, the FSC should broaden the definition of "innovativeness" of individual STO projects, so as to allow more opportunities for issuers to meet financial regulatory sandbox requirements.(Kelvin Chung is senior attorney and sub-leader of Cryptoassets and Token Economy Taskforce of KPMG in Taiwan)

Ministry of Science of Technology (MOST)'s Global Research & Industry Alliance (GLORIA) is participating at Computex, showcasing the research results and integrated solutions from 18 alliances formed by different universities and industry sectors.Each of the GLORIA-sponsored projects integrates the respective school's interdisciplinary technical teams and industrial experts.The universities featured at the event are: National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University, National Chiao Tung University, National Cheng Kung University, National Chengchi University, National Yang-Ming University, National Central University, National Sun Yat-sen University, National Chung Hsing University, Taipei Medical University, China Medical University, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, National Taipei University of Technology, National Formosa University, Far East University, Feng Chia University, Chung Yuan Christian University, and National Taiwan Ocean University.GLORIA focuses on universities, and offers related customized services according to different levels of membership in the form of industry-academia collaborative projects, including talent matching, technical advisory, business matching, laboratory equipment, and database access. This time around, MOST leads a group of top technical teams in areas of intelligent manufacturing, semiconductor, AI, and IoT, to offer energy for upgrade targeting smart living and industrial needs.In the area of intelligent manufacturing, traditionally, agriculture requires extensive manpower to patrol the fields daily. Pest and sudden natural disasters often result in severe losses. National Sun Yat-sen University has developed an intelligent farming server system, monitoring illuminance, irrigation water quality, water content, soil conductivity and soil infiltration rate. All observation data will be uploaded to the cloud via wireless transmission, building big data for analysis and prediction to remind farmers of harvesting time or monitor the results of breed improvement at all times, thus minimizing the likelihood of loss due to natural disasters.In the area of semiconductor, National Tsing Hua University's Candlelight OLED Triggering Lighting Renaissance is the world's very first hazard and pollution-free display lighting technology. In addition to being praised by journals of clinical oncology as the innovative lighting technology that helps fight breast cancer, it can also be used extensively as lighting in hospitals, hotels, homes, and factories, effectively mitigating the hazard of lighting in modern cities and lowering the possibility of eye disease or skin disease resulted from long-term exposure to light.In the area of AI and IoT, National Central University is exhibiting image recognition assembly line integration technology and smart tag, which aid engineers and factory management staff: test data of different systems, operation procedures, and assembly line facilities of different scales can all be managed on one system, achieving highly efficient and automated control and management even for factories at different locations.In the area of biotechnology, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology is showcasing highly sensitive electrochemical immunosensor, which can detect the slightest responses of ovarian cancer cells and generate strong signals used for detection of malignant tumors, as well as differentiating blood serums of patients with ovarian cancer and other gynecological diseases.This exhibition presents outstanding achievements by each alliance focusing on forward-looking areas. GLORIA's objective is to bridge industry-academia collaborations with international trends, and during Computex 2019, GLORIA is showcasing its interim achievements as the important platform that integrates resources for industry-academia cooperation and promotes research results.MOST showcases GLORIA projects

At Computex 2019, Intel revealed more details around its laptop innovation program, code name "Project Athena," including new "key experience indicators" (KEI) aligned with real-world conditions and the 1.0 target specification for the first wave of advanced laptops coming to market this year across Windows and Chrome operating systems.Project Athena is a multi-year program that charts a course for the PC ecosystem to raise the bar on laptop innovation. Its goal is to deliver advanced laptops that help people focus, to be always ready and to adapt to different roles throughout the day - from work and education to family interests, passion projects, entertainment and more.More than 80% of people expect the PC to still be one of the most important technologies 50 years from now, and with Project Athena, Intel is aligning innovation to address people's needs, challenges and expectations of their devices to deliver better experiences on the laptop for years to come. The innovation program includes:- New experience targets, called KEIs, defined by real-world usage models- An annual spec outlining platform requirements Extensive co-engineering support and innovation pathfinding - Ecosystem collaboration to accelerate component development, optimization and availability - A comprehensive verification process for laptops that are a part of Project AthenaKey experience indicatorsIn 2019, Intel is laying the technical foundation to drive more consistent experiences on the laptop. Derived from day-in-the life research of laptop users under real-world conditions, Intel developed a new framework of engineering metrics called KEIs as an experience-focused tool designed to supplement industry-standard benchmarking tools. Intel plans to evolve and introduce new KEI targets year over year.To better reflect an out-of-the-box laptop experience for consumers, the KEIs are evaluated on OEM devices with representative default settings while standard background tasks and programs are running. Systems are also evaluated both on battery and while plugged in. The first wave of KEI targets are foundational to common laptop workloads and include:- Consistent responsiveness on battery- 16 or more hours of battery life in local video playback mode and 9 or more hours of battery life under real-world performance conditions- Instant resume, including system wake from sleep in less than 1 secondIntel will verify device candidates for alignment with the KEI targets using an assessment suite runing a minimum set of tasks. Workloads in the assessment suite measure the consistency of responsiveness and performance, as well as battery life achievements, for common tasks such as web browsing or streaming while using productivity and companion apps. KEI targets must be met during the program's verification process.1.0 target specificationThe 1.0 target specification is foundational to the innovation expected from Project Athena for years to come and incorporates six key areas of innovation. Highlights include:1. Instant action: Modern Connected Standby and Lucid Sleep features implement fast wake with a simple lid-lift, push of a button or quick fingerprint recognition. 2. Performance and responsiveness: Systems based on Intel Core i5 or i7 processors with Intel Dynamic Tuning Technology, ≥8GB DRAM dual channel mde and ≥265GB NVMe SSD including Intel Optane memory H10 options.3. Intelligence: Including features such as far-field voice services and support for OpenVINO and WinML. Upcoming designs based on 10th Gen Intel Core processors bring broad scale intelligent performance to the laptop with Intel Deep Learning Boost for approx. 2.5X AI performance.4. Battery life: Including fast-charging capabilities over USB Type C, integration and optimization of low-power components and co-engineering support for power efficiency.5. Connectivity: A fast and persistent connection with Intel Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) and optional Gigabit LTE. Connect to billions of USB Type C devices with Thunderbolt 3, the fastest and most versatile port available.6. Form factor: Touch display, precision touchpads and more in sleek, thin-and-light and 2 in 1 designs with narrow bezels for a more immersive experience.Onstage at Computex 2019, Gregory Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of the Client Computing Group, previewed some of the first designs expected from partners based on the upcoming 10th Gen Intel Core mobile processors and aligned with the 1.0 specification, including:- Acer Swift 5 is an ultralight magnesium alloy design for mobile professionals offering powerful performance and long battery life with fast charging for maximum productivity on the go.- Dell XPS 13" 2 in 1 delivers more performance in an 8% thinner form than previous gen with 10th Gen Intel Core processors. It has a modern and beautiful design with premium materials, a refined InfinityEdge display and a 2.5mm top-mounted webcam. - HP Envy 13" Wood Series includes features like Amazon Alexa, wake on voice and fingerprint reader, along with privacy and peace-of-mind with HP Sure View and the HP Webcam Kill Switch solution.- Lenovo Yoga S940 is Lenovo's flagship ultra-slim consumer laptop packed with Lenovo Smart Assist features that can detect presence and recognize voice commands for greater security and convenience. Contour Glass wraps around its bezels for a more streamlined design.Laptops qualifying under the 1.0 target specification span both consumer and commercial categories and are expected to include designs based Intel Core i5 and i7 processors from the 8th Gen Intel Core vPro, 8th Gen Intel Core and 10th Gen Intel Core families. More than a dozen designs from Intel's OEM partners are expected this year.Key experience indicators1.0 target specification for Project Athena

MSI is showcasing a range of products at Computex 2019, including notebooks and desktops powered by Nvidia GeForce RTX GPUs, and its newest selection of Prestige series, gaming graphics cards, gaming motherboards, gaming monitors, gaming gear, as well as servers, rugged tablets and more.Furthermore, the Mystic Light zone brings visitors immersive gaming with Ambient Link synchronized game lighting."We look forward to bringing Computex 2019 the best-in-class hardware lineup for gamers, creators and all," says Sam Chern, MSI Marketing VP. "Whether it's the Best Choice Golden Award winner GT76 Titan gaming laptop, the Best Choice Category Award winner Prestige P100 Series desktop, the cutting-edge TRI-FROZR Thermal Design of MSI graphics cards, or Ambient Link interactive lighting, MSI is showcasing not only innovation across various fields, but also team achievements made possible."MSI GT76 TitanThe MSI GT76 Titan is the first gaming laptop to ever feature a full desktop Intel Core i9 processor with 8-core 16-thread configuration for 5.0GHz overclocking capabilities. The new MSI Cooler Boost Titan cooling design, now armed with four fans and 11 heat pipes, is able to generate 2.25 times the airflow for extreme gaming performance. Coupled with GeForce RTX 2080 graphics, the GT76 Titan once again exceeds the laptop performance boundaries.The GT76 Titan is built with high quality aluminum chassis, carbon fiber themed ventilation grilles and thin bezel design for minimized dimension. It is designed with Mystic Light not only on the keyboard but also with underglow.MSI GE65 RaiderThe latest GE65 Raider continues the core of powerful performance from its predecessor. Forged with the latest RTX graphics and 9th Gen Intel Core i9 processor, the GE65 Raider can handle AAA games titles. In addition, the 240Hz IPS-level thin bezel display ensures sharp, clear images in a compact form factor. The new two-toned mesh design at the bottom provides better ventilation and prevents hot air recirculation. The GE65 Raider also features the latest Killer Wi-Fi 6 for next-gen network experience.MSI Trident X PlusMSI Trident X Plus is the world's smallest gaming desktop to incorporate 9th Gen Intel Core i9 CPU which improves the performance by up to 50% with boosted gameplay and faster rendering. Also, the Trident X Plus is the first compact desktop to incorporate an SFX power supply and the latest MSI GeForce RTX graphics card into a 10 liter case. The Trident X Plus delivers the cooling and stable performance with MSI's Silent Storm Cooling 3 technology separating the CPU, VGA and PSU into independent chambers for optimized airflow. Furthermore, the door-like tempered glass side panel helps users upgrade their components with ease.Optix MPG341CQRMSI Optix MPG341CQR provides both the best visual experience and convenient user experience for gamers. With its UWQHD (3440x1440) high resolution and 21:9 screen ratio, gamers are able to enjoy their games with a chatting or streaming software together on the screen. MPG341CQR has a curved panel with 1800R curvature. For those who enjoy vibrant, dynamic and detailed images of AAA games, MPG341CQR also offers 3000:1 high contrast rate and HDR 400. Additionally, MPG341CQR can perform with 144Hz refresh rates and 1ms response time. Furthermore, the integrated mouse bungee helps sort gamers' mouse cable and the built-in camera holder helps streaming enthusiasts install cameras on MPG341CQR.MSI MEG Z390 GODLIKE gaming motherboardMSI MEG Z390 GODLIKE, as the most premium flagship motherboard, is built for hardcore gaming and extreme overclocking. With 18 digital power phases and Core Boost Technology, this motherboard is ready for high-end CPU. Dynamic Dashboard is an OLED display for hardware information and customized profiles. The Killer xTend makes farther networks, extending LAN and Wi-Fi connection. Xtreme Audio DAC includes dedicated Hi-Fi audio processors, an ESS AUDIO DAC with dedicated ESS Amplifier, WIMA audio capacitors and a 6.3mm headphone out jack for immersive audio experiences. The brand-new Dragon Center not only provides new user interface for more intuitiveness and user-friendliness but updates Mystic Light with MSI Ambient Link function to work with NANOLEAF light panels, a modular LED panel lighting system to decorate with creativity. Game modes allow gamers to display various LED effects with MSI products synchronizing with NANOLEAF panels while facing different situations in the game.MAG Z390 TOMAHAWK motherboardMSI TOMAHAWK family shines in iF Award again with MAG Z390 TOMAHAWK, a military design continuing to demonstrate stronger, tougher and heavier sense. To make sure the installation become more convenient for gamers and offer better protection on I/O panel, MAG Z390 TOMAHAWK generates a holistic design integrating I/O cover and MSI iconic design, the Extended heatsink design to keep the temperature in check, plus Core Boost, a highly optimized design and premium layout to ensure faster and undistorted power delivery to the CPU at pinpoint precision. MAG Z390 TOMAHAWK also allows further customization such as a sticker area that allows gamers to apply their favorite stickers on the heatsink cover and Mystic Light to personalize RGB effects with millions of colors and 17 preset LED effects. For a faster gaming experience, M.2 slot with a new M.2 SHIELD FROZR on board provides faster transfer speeds for SSD and prevention from throttling. In addition, MAG Z390 TOMAHAWK is equipped with Dual Intel LAN and 1x M.2 socket for Intel CNVi wireless module.