Compulab Rolls-Out Passively-Cooled Airtop Systems

Compulab, a maker of miniature and small form-factor computers, is introducing its first desktop system called Airtop today. The new computer can be equipped with rather high-performance components, but is completely fanless and only uses the company’s proprietary natural air-flow (NAF) cooling technology.

Compulab’s Airtop is a compact 7.5-liter desktop system that can dissipate up to 200W of heat using only passive cooling methods. The Airtop utilizes various industry-standard components and can be configured as a gaming PC, a server or a workstation. The system is based on a proprietary motherboard featuring Intel’s C226 platform controller hub (PCH) designed specifically for the Airtop with NAF cooling. The mainboard places CPU socket, DIMM slots, PCI Express x16 slot and other components in a way to enable the most efficient dissipation of heat. To eliminate hot components from the case, the Airtop uses an external PSU with a mini-DIN connector.

The proprietary Airtop mainboard is compatible with Intel Core i7 and Intel Xeon E3 v4 microprocessors based on Intel’s Haswell or Broadwell micro-architectures (LGA1150 packaging) as well as various graphics cards, including NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 950 and Quadro M4000.

The Airtop can be equipped with up to 32 GB of DDR3-1866 memory, four 2.5-inch Serial ATA HDDs/SSDs, one M.2 solid-state drive and one mSATA solid-state drive. The system features two Gigabit Ethernet network controllers (four more may be added using an extension card), a 802.11ac Wi-Fi card with two SIM card sockets, four SMA antennas, four USB 3.0 ports on rear panel, six USB 2.0 ports in total, three RS232 ports, multi-channel audio and so on. While the system utilizes its own mainboard, all the other components are industry-standard and can be upgraded when and if needed.

The NAF heat-exchange system uses two special side-panels, each of which can dissipate up to 100W of heat. The side-panels are equipped with traditional flat copper heat-pipe arrays (with micro-channels) that take away heat from the hottest components (i.e., the CPU and the GPU) and spread it across the side-panel. The heat from the heat-pipe arrays is removed by the special air-tube panels consisting of 14 tubes with air inside. Once the air gets hot, it starts to rise up, removing heat from the side panels (see Compulab’s video for details). Everything happens naturally (via convection) and completely silently. The air tubes are open on both ends and efficiency of convection depends on the movement of air through them. For efficient cooling, owners of Compulab’s Airtop will have to ensure that the tubes are not clogged with dust, which is common in industrial and other environments.

While Compulab’s Airtop is in many ways unique, it reminds us of Zalman’s TNN 500 and TNN 300 fanless cases released about a decade ago. Those cases were considerably bigger and acted like giant heatsinks with a lot of heat-pipes inside, but they combined the same cooling techniques as the Airtop.

Compulab claims that it took years to develop the NAF heat-exchange technology and three years to design the Airtop system. Right now, the desktop is only compatible with previous-generation Intel microprocessors and does not support modern technologies like NVMe or USB 3.1, but eventually the company could develop a more advanced motherboard for the latest-generation Skylake and the upcoming Kaby Lake chips in LGA1151 packaging.

The Airtop is relatively small, its dimensions are 10 cm (w) x 30 cm (h) x 25.5 cm (d) – 4” (w) x 12” (h) x 10” (d). The weight of the PC depends on configuration and can be between 4 and 7 kilograms.

The Compulab Airtop is available as a pre-configured system or as a barebone SFF PC for DIY enthusiasts. Since the system is unique and uses numerous components designed specifically for the Airtop, it naturally is not affordable. The Airtop barebone costs $1128, the Airtop-S passively-cooled server (featuring the Intel Xeon E3-1285L v4 CPU) starts at $1810, the Airtop-G gaming PC (with the Intel Core i7-5775C and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 graphics card) is priced at $1968, whereas the Airtop-W workstation (with Intel’s Xeon E3-1285L v4 chip and NVIDIA’s Quadro M4000 graphics adapter) costs $2999. The systems will be available in Q1 2016.

Fujitsu Spins Off Smartphone and PC Divisions

Tough times in the industry can require companies to make tough business decisions. This month Fujitsu announced that it would spin off its personal computer and smartphone operations into separate wholly-owned subsidiaries. Fujitsu will continue to own the aforementioned business entities, but wants management of the new companies to be fully responsible for their business results. While the move may make sense from financial point of view, it has the potential to be difficult for each business unit to build a unified brand once they are separated.

Throughout Fujitsu’s 80-year history, the firm (like many others) has invested tens of billions in research and development of new technologies and continues to be a major R&D powerhouse. Fujitsu produced Japan’s first mainframe computer in 1954 and subsequently became one of the largest makers of personal computers, together with Siemens. The company remains one of the globe’s biggest IT companies by revenue, but as the IT business has changes, Fujitsu is transforming like many others. Today, the most important parts of the company’s business are IT services, technology solutions, IT consulting and telecommunications. Personal devices, such as smartphones, PCs and others, remain an important part of Fujitsu’s operations, but at this point in time the company believes that it makes sense to spin them off.

Starting from February 1, 2016, Fujitsu’s PC business will be officially called Fujitsu Client Computing Limited, whereas the smartphone subsidiary will be called Fujitsu Connected Technologies Limited. Both newly formed companies will issue 8,000 ordinary shares, which will belong to Fujitsu. Both subsidiaries will receive the assets, liabilities, contractual status, and other rights and obligations concerned with their businesses. Fujitsu will formally invest ¥400 million ($33.206 million) into each of the newly established units.

As with most company splits, Fujitsu is also announcing the revenue each new subsidiary would have generated had it been a separate entity beforehand. Fujitsu Client Computing Limited would have had revenue of ¥303.3 billion ($2.5178 billion) in FY2015 (ending in March 2015), which indicates that would be a a big supplier of PCs and tablets. Total assets that the new subsidiary will get from its parent are worth around ¥26.1 billion ($216.66 million). Earnings of Fujitsu Connected Technologies in FY2015 totaled ¥157.1 billion ($1.304 billion), and the subsidiary’s assets will worth ¥11.9 billion ($98.787 million). 

Fujitsu has said that desktop and notebook PCs, as well as smartphone products, are facing ongoing commoditization, which makes it increasingly hard to differentiate own brand products and compete against global manufacturers. The company indicated that splitting PC and smartphone units from the parent would create two integrated systems “covering all aspects of research, development, design, manufacturing, sales, planning, and after-sales services”. Besides this, the plan will help to “clarify management accountability” should aid Fujitsu to enable management decisions quicker than before, and the goal being to increase efficiency.

While certain companies can operate more efficiently when independent rather than as parts of huge conglomerates like Fujitsu, it is also clear that Fujitsu Client Computing and Fujitsu Connected Technologies will be considerably smaller than their key rivals on the PC and smartphone markets (e.g., Apple, Dell, HP, Samsung, etc.). At present, one of the plus points Fujitsu likes to promote are their in-house unique technologies – under the new system, implementing these might increase the red tape and financial agreements between the R&D side as the projection side. However, once Fujitsu’s PC and mobile subsidiaries are independent, it will be easier for the parent company to find new partners, establish joint ventures or simply sell the subsidiaries should the need arise.

It is noteworthy that while Japanese companies like Sony and Fujitsu are splitting their PC and smartphone businesses, whereas U.S.-based Apple, Microsoft and Google view rich ecosystems of devices as their competitive advantages. Spinning off or selling commoditizing businesses units is not something unusual for Fujitsu. The company used to produce its own hard disk drives, but sold the operations to Toshiba back in 2009. Fujitsu also sold its microcontroller and analog business to Spansion in 2013.