Sights From The IDF13 Tech Showcase: DDR4 Galore, Gigabyte BRIX, and More

We spent a little time checking out the Technology Showcase at IDF13 and spotted a number of cool pieces of hardware on the show floor we thought you’d like to check out.

It seemed a number of popular memory manufacturers all got the same memo, as Crucial, Kingston and G.SKILL were all showing off DDR4 memory modules in their booths, among other existing memory and storage related products.

The focus in Crucial’s booth was clearly on DDR4 memory, which will eventually usher in higher clock speeds at lower voltages on the desktop. G.SKILL too was showing off some DDR4 memory modules, alongside an Ivy Bridge E based system rocking some high-speed DDR3 clocked at 3000MHz. Kingston also had some speedy DDR3 on hand, a boatload of solid state drives, and USB thumb drives, but the stars of Kingston’s booth were a server equipped with 192GB of DDR4 memory, comprised of 24, 8GB sticks. Kingston, however, also had a slick 4-node Avoton server on hand, with each node equipped with 16GB of RAM. Pics of the Avoton and DDR4-equipped servers are in the gallery above.

Gigabyte was also on hand showing off a number of motherboards and small form factor systems. Gigabyte had a couple of new Z87 boards on-hand complete with newly-designed cooling solutions and dual Thunderbolt ports. Alongside the motherboards were a wide array of small form factor BRIX systems, including the recently announced BRIX II and a new machine outfitted with Intel Iris Pro graphics. The BRIX II and BRIX Iris machines both feature various 4th-Gen Intel Core processors based on the Haswell microarchitecture. The smaller machines feature solid state storage, while the taller units can accommodate standard 2.5” drives. You’ll also notice a BRIX machine sitting atop a mini-tripod. That’s the BRIX Projector that was announced a while back, which features a built in mini-projector. Pricing on the BRIX Iris machines wasn’t announced, but expect them to be somewhat more expensive than existing models.

Audience was also on hand talking about their latest es320 audio processor and its extensive noise suppression and speech recognition capabilities. Audience’s demo is incredibly impressive, but one you must experience to fully appreciate. The two laptops in the booth feature Audience technology. A Skype call was initiated between the two machines, first with noise suppression disabled. When the call connects, the ambient noise from the show floor makes it difficult to hear anyone speaking, because the laptop’s mic pick up all of the sounds in the room. But with noise suppression enabled, the background noise is virtually eliminated and caller’s voice is perfectly clear.