A great wall

This six-storey climbing wall is a prominent feature of the HQ’s lobby. We saw numerous Lenovo employees using it, but there were no volunteers from the ranks of the visiting press.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Enterprise Center

Lenovo has a 26-year track record in x86 servers, and boosted its position in this market with the 2014 purchase of IBM’s x86 server business. In Lenovo’s latest quarterly results (fiscal Q2 2018), the Data Center Group reported a fifth consecutive quarter of profit growth and a 58 percent year-on-year increase in revenue, to $1.5 billion. This makes it the fastest-growing of the top three x86 server vendors, says Lenovo (quoting IDC figures).

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

ThinkSystem SR950 Server

Shown here is the ThinkSystem SR950 Server, which is designed for mission-critical workloads like in-memory databases, large transaction databases, batch and real-time analytics, ERP, CRM and virtualised server workloads. Each system has two removable compute trays, each tray containing up to four Intel Xeon Scalable processors, 48 DIMMs, 12 hard drives, one RAID system and six hot-swap fans.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Rack Switch and ThinkSystem SR650 Server

Left: Lenovo’s Rack Switch helps to consolidate server and storage networks into a single fabric, making it a good choice for virtualisation, cloud and enterprise workload solutions.

Right: The ThinkSystem SR650 is a powerful and versatile 2U2P rack server design with up to 24 drive bays. It offers the performance and reliability for business-critical workloads in medium to large enterprises, government and education.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Direct Water Cooled Server

Lenovo’s direct water-cooling for its hyperscale servers covers the entire system rather than just the CPU and memory. Water enters the system at 50 degrees Celsius and exits at around 60 degrees, to be used for room heating. Water cooling eliminates power that’s drawn by cooling fans in the chassis and greatly reduces the required air movement in the server room, which also saves power. Savings of up to 40 percent are possible in the data centre due to the reduced need for air conditioning, says Lenovo.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Innovation Technology Experience Center

Lenovo’s Innovation Technology Experience Center sits within a large atrium space. Here we find PCs and smart devices, gaming, AR and VR kit, and healthcare solutions.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Lenovo SmartVest

SmartVest is a 12-lead ECG using 10 flexible textile electrodes. Features include a 360-degree heart scan, 24-hour continuous monitoring and a mobile app that enables the wearer to check real-time health information. The app also syncs data to the cloud, for remote diagnosis by doctors. SmartVest can identify abnormalities such as tachycardia or atrial fibrillation, while athletes can use it to get accurate real-time heart rate and heart rate variability analysis.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

E-Health system

Lenovo’s E-Health system is currently focused on liver tumour analysis, integrating the professional expertise of medical experts with advanced machine-learning algorithms. Liver cancer is a big problem in China: It’s the third leading cause of death, with more than 50 percent of the world’s new liver cancer cases occurring in China every year.

E-Health performs four main functions: Tumour detection and classification on CT images; tumour annotation; 3D model display with tumour information; and auto-generation of diagnosis reports.

By analysing huge amounts of cancer screening data, E-Health aims to reduce the misdiagnosis rate of cancer and contribute to early-stage cancer diagnosis and treatment.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

HoloTable

Currently a pilot project, Lenovo’s HoloTable is a gesture-driven, interactive holographic display. Here we see the process of CT reconstruction of a liver through a 3D hologram to help doctors plan surgeries.

Doctors can use a touch screen to load patients’ CT images, perform automatic liver segmentation and create 3D models. Doctors can then observe the liver from multiple angles in the holographic space, and rotate, zoom in/out, highlight and reset the model.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Augmented Reality: daystAR

Launched at at Lenovo Tech World 2018, the daystAR platform and stARkit SDK aims to encourage developers to create applications that help commercial customers use AR smart glasses to improve business processes. In this demo, it’s being used for aircraft engine maintenance. Other applications include smart manufacturing and education.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Second-generation Yoga Book

Lenovo’s original 10.1-inch Yoga Book drew praise for its innovative combination of a virtual keyboard and a drawing surface in place of a traditional keyboard. The Yoga Book 2 (a.k.a. C930) continues the innovation, combining a conventional 10.8-inch IPS display with a secondary E Ink touchscreen with pen support. The keyboard, which can be reconfigured to different national layouts, delivers auditory and haptic feedback; when you’re not typing, you can use the secondary screen for drawing or as an e-reader.

Another intriguing feature is the way you open this ultra-thin (9.9mm) laptop: knock twice on the lid, and the clamshell pops open.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Unusual PC designs

The gaming section of the Innovation Technology Experience Center showed off some interesting designs.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Q&A with Lenovo's CEO

During a 45-minute Q&A session with EMEA tech and business journalists, Lenovo’s CEO Yang Yuanqing (generally known as ‘YY’ within the company) addressed a range of issues.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Reliability Lab

Lenovo has about 9,000 square metres of labs in its Beijing campus, and 20 labs in total across different locations in China. The EMEA journalists were shown the acoustic, safety and EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) labs.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Acoustic Lab

In the acoustic lab, Lenovo devices are tested to ensure they don’t emit distracting levels of noise in operation.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Safety Lab

This machine tests the resilience of computers–and packaging–under different levels of temperature and humidity.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

EMC Lab

The EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) lab looks like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but is actually used to ensure that Lenovo devices don’t interfere with your mobile phone signal, among other things.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

PC Design Lab

We weren’t allowed to take photographs on the floor of the PC Design Lab, where the next generation (or two) of products are gestating. With journalists safely corralled in a meeting room, staff explained the creative processes behind iconic Lenovo designs such as the ‘watchband’ hinge seen on various Yoga hybrid laptops.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

On-campus market

For all its Silicon Valley gloss, Lenovo’s campus finds room for ancillary activities such as this informal market on the ground floor.

SEE: Beyond the PC: Lenovo’s ambitious plan for the future of computing (cover story PDF) (TechRepublic)

Campus facilities

tAs well as several canteens, the new Beijing campus includes a laundry room, gym, child care centre and other living facilities.

Also see

• Resource and data recovery policy (Tech Pro Research)
• Special Report: A Guide to Data Center Automation (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
• What’s next for data centers? Think micro data centers (ZDNet)
• Lenovo taps IBM’s cognitive and blockchain tools to improve customer service (ZDNet)
• Photos: The 20 greenest data centers in the world (TechRepublic)
• Photos: 10 tech companies with amazing employee perks (TechRepublic)
• Photo Galleries: More must-see coverage (TechRepublic on Flipboard)