Intel Introduces 10th Generation Comet Lake Y and U-Series Processors

10th Generation Ice Lake processors for 2-in-1 laptops and tablets, and other low-power devices have just started shipping, but Intel has now launched another 10th generation family, namely Comet Lake, that is also designed for the same type of products. But instead of being manufactured using a 10nm process, Comet Lake processors will rely on Intel’s “highly optimized” 14nm process technology leveraging “improvements in intra-node optimizations”. There will be Y-Series and U-Series like in other low-power high-performance Intel processors with respectively 7W and 15W TDP, and those processors will come as Core i3/i5/i7 parts Intel Comet Lake family is the first to offer a 6-core processor in the U-series family and will provide faster CPU frequencies, faster memory interfaces, support for Intel Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) and Thunderbolt 3.  The new processors are said to deliver up to 16% overall performance gains, and over 41% better productivity and multitasking on Microsoft […]

Gemini Dual Screen Laptop is Made of Two Kay Lake-R Tablets (Crowdfunding)

Gemini Dual Screen Laptop

[Update August 24, 2019:  CNX Software has received a message claiming the project is a scam (identity theft): This is Li Yunjian, the Owner of following company : GST Communication Co., Ltd (Hongkong) 深圳市杰仕特通讯有限公司 (China Mainland) Our Website on Alibaba: https://chinagstgroup.en.alibaba.com/ This is a fraudster illegally using our company information to scam ] [Update October 2, 2019: Gemini Dual Screen Laptop crowdfunding campaign is up again, but references to “GST Communication” are gone] Note by CNXSoft: The campaign is under review and they have stopped taking contributions. I can only assume it’s a trademark issue because Intel did not like them to use the name “Gemini”. If it’s indeed the case, It should be resolved with a new name. We’ll remove this notice when/if the campaign comes back online. The Chinese company GST has been running a crowdfunding campaign for the Gemini, a dual-screen laptop, with the ability to be […]

Commell LE-37N 3.5″ SBC is Powered by Intel Whiskey Lake-U Core i7-8665UE Processor

Commell has announced its 3.5” LE-37N SBC run by the 8th generation Whiskey Lake-U quad-core processor. The board has support for triple displays, 4x USB 3.1 Gen 2, 2x SATA III 2x GbE, M2 and Mini-PCIe. Previously we reported on the ASRock IMB-1216 mini-ITX board powered by a choice of Whiskey Lake-U SoCs, as well as the crowdfunded UP Xtreme Whiskey Lake-U SBC. LE-37N Whiskey Lake-U SBC The LE-37N miniboard platform is specifically designed for the Whiskey Lake-U Intel processors with the FCBGA1528 sockets. But it was built with the quad-core, 8-thread, 1.7 GHz Core i7-8665UE with an 8MB cache, 15W TDP and 24 EU Intel Generation 9.5 HD Graphics. It supports DDR4 memory in two SO-DIMM 2400 MHz slots for up to a total of 32GB.  The 8th Generation Whiskey Lake-U i7 processor is more power-efficient and supports Linux and Windows OSes. Extra Features and Display Options There is […]

5W Intel Tiger Lake-Y Series Processor with Gen12 UHD Graphics Benchmarked

The current high-performance low power 5W Intel processors are part of Amber Lake family, which will be followed by Comet Lake in 2020, and Tiger Lake in 2021 according to a roadmap leaked a few months ago. It looks a little too early for this, but NotebookCheck.net reports an unnamed Intel Tiger Lake Y-series processor has showed up in UserBenchmarks website. The system is said to feature an “Intel TigerLake Y LPDDR4x T4 Crb” motherboard, with an “Intel Tiger Lake Client Platform” coupled with 12GB DDR4 memory. The processor is only named “Intel 000” and comes with 4 cores, 8 threads having a base clock of 1.2 GHz, and an (average) Turbo clock of 2.9 GHz.  The SoC also comes with a Gen12 Intel UHD Graphics, but the computer also features a much faster AMD RX 580 graphics cards so bear this in mind if you’re looking at graphics benchmarks. […]

Intel Mini PCs Linux Performance Comparison

Intel mini PC side-by-side comparison table

Recent vulnerabilities in Intel x86 microprocessors (Meltdown, Spectre, Foreshadow, RIDL, Fallout, ZombieLoad, etc.) are now addressed with mitigation patches for the Linux kernel although have resulted in some performance degradation. As a consequence, my previous comparison benchmarks could be somewhat misleading when compared with new results given the different versions of software at the time of execution. So I’ve repeated running my standard Phoronix Test Suite benchmarks on several of the latest mini PCs each running the latest updated Ubuntu 18.04.2 software with the same Ubuntu 4.15.0-54 kernel. Specifically, the mini PCs I’ve used are as follows: Intel NUC NUC7CJYSAL (Celeron J4005 Gemini Lake) Pepper JobsGLK-UC2X (Celeron N4100 Gemini Lake) Beelink Gemini X X45 (Celeron J4105 Gemini Lake) Beelink Gemini X X55 (Pentium Silver J5005 Gemini Lake) with updated BIOS Intel NUC NUC7PJYH (Pentium Silver J5005 Gemini Lake) Beelink L55 (i3-5005U Broadwell) On each mini PC, I’ve also run sbc-bench which is […]

Beelink L55 Review – An Intel Core i3-5005U Mini PC Tested with Windows 10 & Ubuntu 18.04

Beelink L55 Review

With the shortage of Gemini Lake processors, some manufacturers have taken to releasing new mini PCs using older CPUs. The Beelink L55 is one such example and uses Intel’s Broadwell I3-5005U CPU which is a dual-core 4-thread 2.00 GHz processor with Intel’s HD Graphics 5500. The L55 is a ‘NUC’ style mini PC and physically consists of a 128 x 126 x 46 mm (5.04 x 4.96 x 1.81 inches) box case with a front panel that includes the power button, a headphone jack and a couple of 3.0 USB ports and then on the rear, two more 3.0 USBs, two 2.1 USBs, HDMI (1.4), DP and two gigabit Ethernet ports. Note that there is no SD or micro SD card slot. The full specifications include: The L55 comes with either a 256GB or 512GB (as tested in this review) M.2 SSD with pre-installed Windows 10 Home version 1809 together […]

Google Fuchsia Operating System Gets its own Developer Website

Fuchsia Documentation

Google has been developing Fuchsia open source operating system based on Zircon kernel for several years. It’s still unclear what’s the end goal. Will it replace Android or/and Chrome OS, ditching the Linux kernel for Zircon in the process? We don’t know, and Google claims its an experimental endeavor. Only the future will tell. We’ve had access to the source code since 2016,  but Google has now launched a dedicated developer website for Fuchsia: fuchsia.dev This is year 2019, and Google being a Western company it should not be surprising the first part of the documentation is a Code of Conduct, but there’s also plenty of technical documentation with a glossary, getting started guide, building instructions, an overview of the OS, code samples, and instructions to contribute either by testing or submitting changes to Gerrit. Fuchsia is strictly a 64-bit operating system at this stage with support for Arm64 and […]

UP Xtreme Whiskey Lake-U SBC Launched for €249 and up (Crowfunding)

UP Extreme SBC

Back in March, I was tipped about AAEON’s upcoming UP Xtreme Whiskey Lake board equipped with Intel’s latest 15W processors, and providing a boost in performance compared to their previous UP boards, including UP Squared board introduced in 2016 with a choice of Apollo Lake processors. The company has now finally launched a Kickstarter campaign to let the public pledge for UP Xtreme SBC for €249 and up. UP Xtreme Whiskey Lake-U SBC specifications: SoC (one or the other) Intel Celeron 4305UE dual-core processor @ up to 2.2 GHz with 2MB cache, Intel UHD 610 graphics Intel Core i3-8145UE dual-core 4-thread processor @ up to 2.1 GHz / 3.9 GHz (Turbo) with 4MB cache, Intel UHD 620 graphics Intel Core i5-8365UE quad-core 8-thread processor @ up to 1.6 GHz / 4.1 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, Intel UHD 620 graphics Intel Core i7-8665UE quad-core 8-thread processor @ up to 1.9 […]