Intel Readies New NUCs Based on Kaby Lake and Apollo Lake SoCs

As one might expect, Intel is working on a new generation of its NUC small-form-factor systems based on the company’s upcoming Kaby Lake and Apollo Lake microprocessors. The writers over at FanlessTech have published what appears to be an exclusive of a set of Intel slides regarding the next generation of NUCs, and we are in the process of double verifying the details. Until then, here’s our analysis of the news.

The new systems are expected to hit the market in late 2016 and early 2017 and bring a number of new technologies, which are absent from today’s SFF PCs. In particular, the new systems will support Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.1 (10 Gbps), HDMI 2.0 and the new processors.

The upcoming Intel NUC systems are code-named Baby Canyon and Arches Canyon, according to the slides published by FanlessTech. The Baby Canyon PCs will be powered by Intel’s upcoming Kaby Lake-U SoCs, whereas the Arches Canyon will feature the company’s Apollo Lake chips. The new systems will complement and then eventually replace current-gen NUCs running Broadwell, Braswell and Skylake processors. Meanwhile, Intel’s top-of-the-range code-named Skull Canyon NUCfeaturing the high-end Core i7-6700HQ processor (quad-core with Hyper-Threading, 6 MB LLC, Intel Iris Pro Graphics 580 with 72 EUs and eDRAM, etc.) will not be replaced at least until late 2017.

Baby Canyon with Kaby Lake-U SoCs

Intel’s Baby Canyon NUCs will be the positioned as Intel’s mainstream SFF PCs for users, who would like to have Core-based CPUs powered by the company’s high-performance microarchitecture (Kaby Lake in this case). Thanks to microarchitectural enhancements, the new systems promise to be faster than existing mainstream NUCs, but at this point we have no idea what to expect from Kaby Lake in general, except natural enhancements of iGPU as well as improvements to media playback capabilities.

All of the Baby Canyon PCs will support up to 32 GB of DDR4-2133 memory, HDMI 2.0, an M.2-2280 socket for PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs, a MicroSDXC card-reader as well as a soldered-down Intel Wireless-AC 8265 controller. The Core i7 and i5 Baby Canyon systems will also come equipped with a Thunderbolt 3 controller, which will automatically bring support for USB 3.1 running at up to 10 Gbps, whereas NUCs featuring Core i3 CPUs will continue to rely on USB 3.1 Gen 1 implementation with 5 Gbps transfer-rate. Given all the hubbub surrounding Type-C audio, Intel decided to keep the good-old 3.5 mm audio jack but did not implement support for USB-C Audio into the Baby Canyon, at least, according to the published slides.

The Baby Canyon family of NUCs is projected to arrive in early 2017, around the same time we expect Intel to start discussing its Kaby Lake-U processors with HDMI 2.0 support. Keep in mind that Intel has not announced Kaby Lake chips officially, hence, all the plans are subject change.

Arches Canyon NUCs with Apollo Lake SoCs

The Arches Canyon NUCs will be Intel’s new entry-level SFF systems running Apollo Lake SoCs branded as Celeron J-series processors. The chips will feature all new Goldmont x86 microarchitecture, Intel’s ninth-generation graphics architecture (Gen9) as well as improved media playback (due to hardware-accelerated playback of 4K video encoded using HEVC and VP9 codecs). Since the new SoCs are rated for 10 W TDP, it is logical to expect higher clock speeds than previous Atom-based NUCs, even though at this point this is a speculation.

Intel reportedly plans to offer two versions of its Arches Canyon NUCs: the NUC6CAYS with 2 GB of DDR3L-1866 memory, 32 GB eMMC storage and pre-installed Windows 10 Home x64 OS; as well as the NUC6CAYH, which will come as a barebone PC. Both systems will still support up to 8 GB of DDR3L memory, one 2.5”/9.5 mm SSD/HDD, a 1×1 wireless module supporting IEEE 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2, an HDMI 2.0 display output, USB Type-A ports, an SDXC card reader and so on. Intel decided to place a D-Sub connector on the back to enable connectivity with cheap displays.

Based on the documents published by FanlessTech, the fully-populated NUC6CAYS will hit the market ahead of the barebone NUC6CAYH sometimes in the fourth quarter of this year.

Please keep in mind that all the information regarding Intel’s new generations of NUCs is completely unofficial and many details may change by the time the systems hit the market. Intel responded to requests for confirmation and responded with ‘Intel does not comment on unreleased products’, which is the expected response. As mentioned at the top of this news, we are in the process of double verifying the information in the slides, but for anyone who follows Intel’s NUC lines, these hardware specifications are not far fetched at all and make sense for the markets they are entering. 

Gallery: Intel Readies New NUCs Based on Kaby Lake and Apollo Lake SoCs

The Intel Compute Stick (Core m3-6Y30) Review

Small and power-efficient computers in the form of NUCs and Compute Sticks are here to stay. The Compute Stick form factor is the x86 version of the popular ARM-based HDMI sticks. The first generation x86 Compute Stick came from Intel and used a Bay T…

Lenovo Unveils ThinkStation P410/P510: Intel Xeon E5 v4 with Up to 8 Cores, NVIDIA Quadro M6000

Lenovo has unveiled its new ThinkStation P410 and P510 workstations, which are based on the recently introduced multi-core Intel Xeon E5 v4 processors with up to eight cores as well as NVIDIA’s Quadro M5000 or M6000 graphics. The updated workstations fully support capabilities of Intel’s latest CPUs and come equipped with special programs to take advantage of their features.

The new Lenovo ThinkStation P410 and 510 workstations are based on Intel’s C612 PCH as well as Intel’s Xeon E5-1600 v4 or E5-2600 v4 processors that belong to the Broadwell-EP family and feature up to eight cores as well as Intel Turbo Boost Max 3.0 technology, which identifies the core with the highest frequency potential and then directs important workloads to it in a bid to increase real-world performance. The machines support up to 128 GB (P410) or 256 GB (P510) of DDR4-2400 memory; multiple storage devices with M.2, PCIe, SATA and SAS interfaces; optional Thunderbolt 3; optional 802.11ac Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.0 module; a variety of PCIe add-on cards, an optional ODD (using the Flex module which can also add a 29-in-1 card reader, FireWire) and so on.

The Lenovo ThinkStation P410 is the smaller of the workstations. It supports up to NVIDIA Quadro M5000 graphics adapter (2048 CUDA Cores, 8 GB of GDDR5 ECC memory); up to two PCIe x16 cards, one PCIe x8 card and one PCIe x4 card; up to four 3.5” drives, up to four 2.5” SSDs/HDDs as well as up to one M.2 SSD. Meanwhile, the Lenovo ThinkStation P510 is the larger machine, it supports up to Quadro M6000 professional video card (3072 stream processors, 12 GB of GDDR5 memory), more storage devices and so on.

Both workstations support two important software features: the Lenovo Performance Tuner (LPT) as well as the Processor Affinity. The LPT offers BIOS management, graphics management, power management and resource monitoring. It also contains predefined application profiles that are optimized for particular professional programs (Adobe Illustrator CC, Autodesk AutoCAD 2017, ANSYS, etc.). Meanwhile, the PA allows to designate a program to run on a specific processor core(s), which is especially important because Intel’s Turbo Boost Max 3.0 technology determines the fastest cores and it is now possible to take advantage of them. Alternatively, the PA prevents apps optimized for multi-core CPUs from taking all of the available resources.

As for operating systems, the new Lenovo ThinkStation P410/P510 workstations come with either Microsoft Windows 10 Pro or Ubuntu Linux.

Lenovo is set to start selling the new ThinkStation P410/P510 workstations in the coming weeks or months in various regions. The company does not touch upon their pricing other than saying that the P410 will be “affordable”. However, exact prices will naturally depend on particular configurations.

Gallery: Lenovo Unveils ThinkStation P410/P510: Intel Xeon E5 v4 with Up to 8 Cores, NVIDIA Quadro M6000

Additional from Ian: When we reviewed the new Intel Broadwell-E processors a couple of weeks ago, Turbo Boost Max 3 (TBM3) was in a state of disarray: while Intel supported it, it relied on the operating system having the relevant driver but also the motherboard manufacturer supporting it by default. At the time of testing, none of our motherboards had TBM3 enabled by default, instead saying that if the user wants it, they should enable it in the BIOS. Normally this is a recipe for obscurity, given so few users actually enter the BIOS (even more so in the enterprise segment). The fact that Lenovo is enabling it by default for these systems is a green flag for performance for sure. It will be interesting to see how it is implemented: on our initial software testing, the minimum polling rate for TBM3 was one second, which means it has a distinct variable effect on shorter benchmarks. If this has been somehow reduced by Lenovo, it would be a significant plus point in the design. However, we’re unsure if that one-second polling rate is an Intel or driver limitation at this point. It is certainly worth keeping an eye out for anyone that reviews Lenovo’s implementation.