After years of touring the country for numerous gaming and hardware conventions – and years of piled-up invites to visit hardware headquarters – we’ve finally made the trek out to California to learn and write about the engineering teams.
I’ll start with a simple trip itinerary; if you have any questions at all for any of these companies, please post them below and we’ll add them to our interview lists.
Monday, 7/15 – Hardware Manufacturing (Fountain Valley)
Kingston Technology, HQ: Monday sees the kick-off of our extended visitation, where we’ll spend most the day talking to Kingston about SSDs, memory, Flash-based products, SMT manufacturing lines, automated test facilities, and plenty of other topics (including where I can eat pizza, probably). This tour should be particularly interesting to readers of our SSD manufacturing article, as we’ll finally be able to show a bit more about how Flash products are built and tested. A huge thanks to Kingston for initiating this entire “dream trip” and partially sponsoring our coverage.
Tuesday, 7/16 – Star Citizen (Santa Monica)
Cloud Imperium Games: Following up with our previous two posts about Cloud Imperium Games’ upcoming Star Citizen title, which has received more than $13mm in public funding, we’ll be hitting-up the game’s Santa Monica studio and talking again with Chris Roberts. If you’re interested in learning more about how games are really aiming to push the limits of PC hardware, Star Citizen is the one to pay attention to right now.
Wednesday, 7/17 – More Hardware (City of Industry)
MSI: Wednesday kicks off with MSI, known for their motherboard and video card manufacturing (and their recent heavy push into the laptop market). We’ll be talking to MSI’s design team about GPU cooling, key focal points for motherboard purchases, and laptop thermal design.
Rosewill: With their Throne having just launched (the review will hit the web as soon as we’re back), Rosewill is eager to showcase some of their massive range of gaming and system building products.
Newegg: As part of our Rosewill visit, we managed to secure a trip to Newegg’s California warehouse, where we’re hopeful we’ll be able to snag some photos/video of the famous retailer’s shipping headquarters.
Thursday, 7/18 – MORE Hardware (San Jose & Silicon Valley)
You know things are getting serious when you see the words “Silicon Valley” on a hardware website.
LSI: Makers of the somewhat ubiquitous SandForce Flash Memory Processor (SSD controller), LSI will be educating us further on SSD test methodology, priorities for consumers when shopping for SSDs, and other general “how it works” topics. We hope to publish video content with insight from LSI’s staff, with the objective of providing you more knowledge to fuel purchases. As with Kingston, a shout-out to LSI for their sponsorship in this quest.
Intel: There’s a small company in Silicon Valley – barely a dot on the map – but we think they’re going places. They’re called “Intel” (pronounced Intel – it’s very phonetically hazardous, really), and they make these things called “processors.” We’re not really sure why you’d want such a thing, but we’re willing to lend our ears.
Milind Karnik: Currently working on his own projects, Milind Karnik is a former LSI and Dell executive (actually, he owned my group whilst I worked in biz-client test) with a history at other large companies. Further credentials include Intel, where he contributed to the development of the original tick-tock cadence design.
Friday, 7/19 – An Encore (Santa Clara)
NVIDIA: We’re bringing the big guns this week. After talking to Intel on Thursday, we’ll be following-up with nVidia to tour some of their labs, test facilities, and interview designers/PMs. We’re excited about the opportunity to get a glimpse inside the world’s largest dedicated GPU manufacturer, and with solid content production options, we feel confident that this tour will yield great learning opportunities for all our readers and staff.
That’s it! I’ll be blazing the Santa Cruz mountain bike trails after we hit-up nVidia, but come Tuesday (7/23), it’s back to work. Our team will be producing content throughout this week while at the factories, but you can expect much more once we’ve returned to home base.
Again, if any questions arise for these organizations, please post them below!
- Steve "Lelldorianx" Burke.