Quad-core and a 6000W heatsink: Impressions from the IDF showfloor
San Francisco (CA) - The recently completed IDF had a lot of news about new processors and computers, but the event also exhibits a fair share of other gadgets. Several dozen companies showed off their wares and we are showing some of the most interesting. They run the gamut from a Core 2 Duo overclocked to 4.0 GHz to a heat plate that can dissipate 6000 watts.
Several server makers like Supermicro and Appro showed off new dual Clovertown servers with a total of eight processing cores. It's amazing how compact servers have become and these new models were only 1U tall.
Tyan also gave us a demo of their new Personal Super Computer with four boards that can support two Woodcrest processors each - for a total of 16 processing cores. The PSC is controlled with a KVM switch and is about the same size as a small refrigerator.
Graphics card companies also made a showing. ATi had their new Mobility Radeon X1700 running in an Asus laptop. ATI reps said the card speeds up HD-DVD decode and had a Van Helsing disc playing on the laptop. Even with hardware decoding, the CPU was still quite busy, as you can see in the gallery. Sapphire had a new PCI Express card with a built-in HDMI output port.
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Humphrey Cheung was a senior editor at Tom's Hardware, covering a range of topics on computing and consumer electronics. You can find more of his work in many major publications, including CNN and FOX, to name a few.