AKiTiO Introduces Node: Thunderbolt 3 eGFX Box for $299

Over the past week AKiTiO has formally introduced its new external graphics enclosure using a Thunderbolt 3 connection. As with other external graphics enclosures, the AKiTiO Node allows a user to easily upgrade the graphics sub-system of notebook, AIO or SFF PCs that have a Thunderbolt 3 port by using a discrete graphics card. One of the key elements to eGFX is price and look, and AKiTiO has placed the Node at $299, but itcan fit graphics cards with massive coolers.

Enthusiasts started to experiment with external graphics over Thunderbolt 2 interface several years ago after multiple attempts of companies like ATI/AMD, ASUS and some others to develop commercial external GPU technologies had failed. Back in 2014, plugging a video card to a MacBook Pro using Thunderbolt 2 was costly: users had to buy a chassis for up to $1000 (there were cheaper methods, but they did not look solid), a PSU and a graphics board. The homebrew method worked, but had a number of limitations when it came to bandwidth, hot-plugging (more importantly, unplugging), driver support and some others, not to mention the aesthetics of such eGFX setups. Given the trend towards miniaturization of mobile and desktop PCs, the idea of external graphics was far too alluring to skip, which is why Intel decided to support it with its Thunderbolt 3 technology introduced in 2014. While technically TB3 is PCIe 3.0 x4 over a cable, to properly enable operation of external GPUs, Intel and its allies had to ensure support of eGFX hardware though operating systems, GPU drivers, firmware and so on. Earlier this year all pieces of the puzzle finally came together and the first “official” TB3 eGFX chassis were introduced by Razer and PowerColor.

While both Razer Core and PowerColor Devil Box do the job and even feature a couple of extras, they are rather expensive as they add more than just GPU features – $499 and $379, respectively. This week, AKiTiO, which has been offering external Thunderbolt enclosures for years, introduced its eGFX box that costs $299.99.

The AKiTiO Node is a 42.8 × 14.5 × 22.7 cm (16.85 × 5.71 × 8.94 inches) box made of stainless steel that is compatible with a variety of double-wide full-length/full-height AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards (see the list here). The Node comes with an integrated 400 W SFX PSU (which means that it can be upgraded) as well as one 120 mm fan. As for dimensions, the Node seems to be a little more spacious inside than its rivals, which is good for cooling and compatibility with custom video cards (such as those from ASUS or EVGA). Despite this, GPUs with hybrid cooling (integrated liquid cooling) are not supported, such as AMD Radeon R9 Fury X.

Unlike competing products, the AKiTiO Node is a pure external GPU box and nothing more. It does not have extra USB 3.0 ports (to connect a VR headset, for example), a GbE controller nor a SATA connector. This naturally cuts down its costs and allows Akito to sell the eGFX enclosure at $299 price-point, but additional USB ports will be greatly missed by owners of ultra-thin laptops as well as SFF PCs.

AKiTiO plans to start selling the Node (NODE-T3IA-AKTU) in December.

Gallery: AKiTiO Introduces Node: Thunderbolt 3 eGFX Box for $299

AMD @ SC16: Radeon Open Compute Platform (ROCm) 1.3 Released, Boltzmann Comes to Fruition

Kicking off this week is SC, the annual ACM/IEEE sponsored supercomputing conference in the United States. At this show last year, AMD announced the Boltzmann Initiative, their ambitious plan to overhaul their HPC software stack for GPUs. Recognizing …

NVIDIA Announces Record Q3 FY 2017 Results

Today NVIDIA announced their fiscal earnings for the third quarter of their 2017 fiscal year (and yes, that’s not a typo). NVIDIA has cracked the $2 billion mark for quarterly revenue, with earnings of $2.004 billion this quarter. This is up an impressive 54% compared to the same quarter last year. This record revenue follows a previous record for Q2, and NVIDIA is forecasting revenue for next quarter of $2.1 billion, plus or minus two percent. With this rate of growth, they will easily surpass their best yearly earnings ever which was $5.01 billion announced in January 2016. They are on pace for close to $7 billion for the year, which is a dramatic increase at a time when the core PC market is in decline. Gross margin for this quarter was up 2.7% year-over-year to 59.0%, and operating income was up 161% to $639 million. Net income for the quarter was $542 million, up 120% over last year, and earnings per share came in at $0.83, up 89% year-over-year.

NVIDIA has done a decent job diversifying itself, but it’s core market is still consumer GPU sales. With the launch of Pascal, NVIDIA has maintained a very healthy performance lead, and that has certainly translated into sales. Gaming related sales for this quarter came in at a staggering $1.244 billion, up 63.5% compared to Q3 2016. NVIDIA gained more revenue in the gaming segment this quarter than all of AMD’s Computing and Graphics segment earned in their last quarter. Clearly there was some pent-up demand for the FinFET based GPUs after being on 28 nm for so long. Professional Visualization had a good quarter as well, with revenues of $207 million. That is a 9% increase year-over-year, although they did have a 3% drop in revenue compared to their previous quarter.

With the rise in GPU compute in the datacenter, NVIDIA has aggressively pursued this market, and it is starting to make some real inroads here as well. For Q3 2017, NVIDIA had revenue of $240 million in their Datacenter group, which is up from $82 million a year ago, or a 193% increase in revenue year-over-year. Datacenter revenue is now the second largest segment for NVIDIA, and only a year ago it was half of the professional GPU revenue.

Automotive continues to be a solid performer for NVIDIA too, and they’ve released quite a few SoCs specifically for this market. NVIDIA announced that it has an agreement to supply Tesla Motors the DRIVE PX 2 platform to power a new AutoPilot system in the Model S, X, and upcoming 3. With a maximum TDP of 250 Watts, DRIVE PX 2 casts off the mobile SoC constraints of the previous design, despite still having NVIDIA’s Denver CPU paired with Cortex-A57. With the continued investment in this sector, NVIDIA has seen strong growth here, and revenue for this quarter was $127 million, which is up from $79 million a year ago, or a gain of 60%.

Finally, OEM and IP had earnings of $186 million for the quarter, which is down slightly from the $193 million they earned a year ago, but with the recent announcement that they will power the Nintendo Switch, perhaps they will see some growth here in the future.

This entire year has been very good for NVIDIA, but this quarter in particular has seen some very strong growth. The best news for NVIDIA and their investors is that they are not just seeing growth in their diversified markets, although they are doing very well there, but the growth in their core market was incredibly strong as well.

Source: NVIDIA Investor Relations