Beelink Unveils World First Intel Wildcat Lake 18A Node Product Family Including EQ mini EQi Mini PCs and ME Pro Hybrid Storage for Advanced Local AI Computing
A new era has dawned in the compact computing sector, with Beelink recently unveiling a new family of products. This is, notably, the worlds first hardware matrix to utilize the Intel Wildcat Lake low power platform. The announcement reveals a lineup across multiple form factors at once – two separate mini PCs and one hybrid storage system. It is also an extremely significant step up in efficiency and local AI computing.
The Intel Wildcat Lake platform is characterized by a switch to the brand new Intel 18A manufacturing process. This node sees the implementation of RibbonFET a 2nd generation gate all around transistor design – providing much tighter control over current and significantly reducing leakage power in comparison to previous generation FinFET designs. Beelink has thus been able to produce small, fast machines while keeping heat levels under tight control.
Added to this is the implementation of PowerVia, a backside power delivery technology. Power delivery circuitry is moved to the back of the silicon die, bypassing a number of conventional wiring bottlenecks and significantly improving signal integrity. From a compact device standpoint this equates to stable power delivery to a given component, enabling higher sustained frequencies under heavy, sustained loads – one of the greatest limitations in previous generation low power desktop devices.
Every machine on the launch lineup comes with the Intel Core 3 304 processor; featuring one high performance Cougar Cove core and four Darkmont efficiency cores along with integrated Xe3 graphics. In comparison to the previous generation Intel Core i3 N305, this offers about 120% higher single core processing power and a roughly 60% performance improvement in multi core workloads, ensuring that everything from web browsing to office multitasking happens instantaneously.
Another significant aspect is that the integrated Neural Processing Unit is designed for local AI workloads, giving up to 24 TOPS of combined AI compute and allowing local only applications for things such as real time language translation, automated document processing, and local speech recognition without the need for sensitive data to be sent to the cloud.
The Beelink EQ mini is ideal for minimalistically set up desks. Minimal and sleek, it has an integrated 45W PSU and is perfectly capable of everyday office productivity, web browsing, and general media consumption while simultaneously keeping cable spaghetti to a minimum.
For the power user needing greater network connectivity, the Beelink EQi offers double the networking capability of the EQ mini a 10GbE and a 2.5GbE but at the cost of an 85W PSU, which makes it ideal as a network router, firewall appliance or for edge computing.
Rounding off the lineup, the Beelink ME Pro is a device aiming to combine desktop computing with networked storage. Using the same dual networking and 85W PSU configuration as the EQi, the device instead includes 2 physical 3.5" hard drive bays allowing the unit to function as a powerful home server for media storage, file streaming, and local AI.
