Intel Office Visit: Optimizing Production & Design

Eva Wong

IceWhale author

Eva Wong is the Technical Writer and resident tinkerer at ZimaSpace. A lifelong geek with a passion for homelabs and open-source software, she specializes in translating complex technical concepts into accessible, hands-on guides. Eva believes that self-hosting should be fun, not intimidating. Through her tutorials, she empowers the community to demystify hardware setups, from building their first NAS to mastering Docker containers.

The Intel Visit

Thanks to the kind introduction of a backer, we established the connection with the Intel IOTG team in Shanghai last week and discussed the potential partnership with the Intel team. The Zima team and Intel IOTG technology, business, and product teams exchanged views on the future cooperation model.

The topic mainly includes the following aspects:

Provide direct chip supply through Intel supply chain;
Complete the NDA signing with the Intel team and related cooperation framework;
The Intel IOTG team will provide the Zima team with support in R&D, marketing, and product development, and mass production;

Based on community feedback, we also started to communicate on product revisions and Intel NICssupply issues. The specific feasibility and supply issues are being further discussed during the communication between Zima’s R&D team and Intel. Both have agreed to take a second meeting next week. We will continue to provide an update on this topic.

Adjustments on Production Design

Based on @Alexander Neth’s suggestions on production design, the team will provide an acrylic backplate as a protective plate for all ZimaBoards when they pass QC and leave the factory to avoid possible problems during use and installation.

Based on @Michael Waiblinger’s suggestion, we have negotiated with suppliers to customize and add 1x pure black SATA cable to all pledges. A custom pure black Y-shaped SATA cable is also under design process to give 2x low voltage power supply for the SSD or 2.5″ HDD.

As for the negative feedback from Update 5, we realized that although cross-promotion is common on Kickstarter, we have misused the promotion concept and it has hurt all your feelings. And this is NOT what we intend to do. We are actively contacting the Kickstarter platform to delete this update and sincerely apologize for the mistake. In future updates, it will NO LONGER occur again.

Please stay tuned next week when we come back to update you on plans for R&D, Intel partnership, and production.

Best，

Lauren & ZimaBoard Team