Today, at the "Data Center and AI Technology Premiere," AMD announced the products, strategy and ecosystem partners that will shape the future of computing, highlighting the next phase of data center innovation. AMD was joined on stage with executives from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Citadel, Hugging Face, Meta, Microsoft Azure and PyTorch to showcase the technological partnerships with industry leaders to bring the next generation of high performance CPU and AI accelerator solutions to market.

"Today, we took another significant step forward in our data center strategy as we expanded our 4th Gen EPYC processor family with new leadership solutions for cloud and technical computing workloads and announced new public instances and internal deployments with the largest cloud providers," said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "AI is the defining technology shaping the next generation of computing and the largest strategic growth opportunity for AMD. We are laser focused on accelerating the deployment of AMD AI platforms at scale in the data center, led by the launch of our Instinct MI300 accelerators planned for later this year and the growing ecosystem of enterprise-ready AI software optimized for our hardware."

Seagate has recently published a preview of its next generation product hard drive lineup that utilize heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. A company roadmap indicates that the first commercial release of 32 TB capacity HAMR Mach 2 drives is penciled in for a Q3 2023 window, with a short hop to increased storage (40 TB) models predicted for launch in 2024. Seagate is also expected to release 24 TB and 28 TB capacity HDDs - based on the older perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology - at some point in the near future. Technology news outlets anticipate that these two product ranges will co-exist for a while, until Seagate decides to favor its more advanced thermal magnetic storage solution. A lucky data center client has been getting hands-on time with evaluation HAMR hardware, as reported in late April. Seagate has since supplied other enterprise customers with unspecified HAMR HDD models.

Executives at Seagate have been openly discussing their HAMR products - destined to sit in new Corvault server equipment. Gianluca Romano, the company's chief financial officer, mentioned several models during a presentation at the Bank of America 2023 Global Technology conference: "When you go to HAMR, our 32-terabyte (model) is based on 10 disks and 20 heads. So same number of disks and head of the current 20-terabyte PMR...So all the increase is coming through areal density. The following one, 40-terabyte, still (has) the same 10 disks and 20 heads. And also the 50 (TB model), we said at our earnings release, in our lab, we are already running individual disk at 5 terabytes."

Inference software enables shift to NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs, delivering 7x throughput for the search giant. Jiusheng Chen's team just got accelerated. They're delivering personalized ads to users of Microsoft Bing with 7x throughput at reduced cost, thanks to NVIDIA Triton Inference Server running on NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs. It's an amazing achievement for the principal software engineering manager and his crew.

Tuning a Complex System
Bing's ad service uses hundreds of models that are constantly evolving. Each must respond to a request within as little as 10 milliseconds, about 10x faster than the blink of an eye. The latest speedup got its start with two innovations the team delivered to make AI models run faster: Bang and EL-Attention. Together, they apply sophisticated techniques to do more work in less time with less computer memory. Model training was based on Azure Machine Learning for efficiency.

Alphacool at Computex presented a few new products that highlighted what the company has been working on. First off, we have the Apex Stealth Metal fan among the latest products introduced by the brand, hailed as the world's first computer fan designed with entirely decoupled propellers, bearings, and motors from the chassis. The design minimizes both the vibration and the noise generated by the fan. The fan frame is constructed entirely of metal, showcasing the fresh Apex design. Additionally, it employs a 6-pole motor. The fan is touted as being silent due to its HDB (Hydro Dynamic Bearing) design. The fan blades are also fine-tuned to achieve maximum airflow and pressure, though specific details will still be released. The Apex Stealth Metal fan will be accessible in black, chrome, and white variants. Also in the pipeline is a unique variant called Alphacool ES Stealth Metal Fan Black, specifically designed for "Enterprise Solutions," featuring an integrated ventilation grill. The Apex Metal fan SKUs will be available for around $30 or less.

NVIDIA and VMware are helping professionals elevate extended reality (XR) by streaming from the cloud with Workspace ONE XR Hub, which includes an integration of NVIDIA CloudXR. Now available, Workspace ONE XR Hub enhances the user experience for VR headsets through advanced authentication and customization options. Combined with the cutting-edge streaming capabilities of CloudXR, Workspace ONE XR Hub enables more professionals, design teams and developers to quickly and securely access complex immersive environments using all-in-one headsets.

Many organizations across industries use XR technologies to boost productivity and enhance creativity. However, teams often come across challenges when it comes to integrating XR into their workflows. That's why NVIDIA and VMware are working together to make it easier for enterprises to adopt augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Whether it's running immersive training sessions or conducting virtual design reviews, professionals can achieve the highest fidelity experience with greater mobility through Workspace ONE XR Hub and CloudXR.

Technology is creating amazing opportunities for our industry and the world, and Windows 11 is at the center of innovation with new experiences that transform how we interact with the Windows PC and each other. With Windows 11, we're seeing record engagement, our highest customer satisfaction over any previous version of Windows in the U.S., and accelerated growth in commercial deployments. In fact, we recently shared as part of our latest earnings report that over 90% of Fortune 500 companies are currently trialing or have already deployed Windows 11.

In February, we brought the new AI-powered Bing to the taskbar and other features to improve the way people get things done on their PCs. Today, we are providing a look at new features and enhancements for Windows 11 that will start to become available tomorrow, May 24, that focus on business needs, such as security and IT management, and new benefits that enhance professional and personal usability. For developers building on Windows, this week we are announcing new innovation at Microsoft Build.

Lenovo Group today announced full-year results, reporting Group revenue of US$62 billion and net income of US$1.6 billion, or US$1.9 billion on a non-Hong Kong Financial Reporting Standards (HKFRS) [1] basis. Profitability was stable with gross margin and operating margin both delivering 18-year highs and non-HKFRS net margin flat year-to-year. While Group revenue was impacted due to the softness in the device market, revenue from non-PC businesses reached a fiscal year high of nearly 40%, fueled by Lenovo's diversified growth engines of Solutions and Services Group (SSG) and Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) growing revenue to record highs of US$6.7 billion and US$9.8 billion respectively, up 22% and 37% year-on-year.

After a year of industry and global uncertainties, Lenovo sees positive signs of the market stabilizing. The Group expects the entire PC and smart devices market to resume year-to-year growth in the second half of 2023, and for the IT services market to resume relatively high growth - together these will drive the total IT market in 2023 back to moderate growth. In the mid-to-long term, digital and intelligent transformation will continue to accelerate, leading to a big growth potential for cloud and computing infrastructure.

NVIDIA today announced that it is integrating its NVIDIA AI Enterprise software into Microsoft's Azure Machine Learning to help enterprises accelerate their AI initiatives. The integration will create a secure, enterprise-ready platform that enables Azure customers worldwide to quickly build, deploy and manage customized applications using the more than 100 NVIDIA AI frameworks and tools that come fully supported in NVIDIA AI Enterprise, the software layer of NVIDIA's AI platform.

"With the coming wave of generative AI applications, enterprises are seeking secure accelerated tools and services that drive innovation," said Manuvir Das, vice president of enterprise computing at NVIDIA. "The combination of NVIDIA AI Enterprise software and Azure Machine Learning will help enterprises speed up their AI initiatives with a straight, efficient path from development to production."

Dell Technologies and NVIDIA announce a joint initiative to make it easier for businesses to build and use generative AI models on-premises to quickly and securely deliver better customer service, market intelligence, enterprise search and a range of other capabilities. Project Helix will deliver a series of full-stack solutions with technical expertise and pre-built tools based on Dell and NVIDIA infrastructure and software. It includes a complete blueprint to help enterprises use their proprietary data and more easily deploy generative AI responsibly and accurately.

"Project Helix gives enterprises purpose-built AI models to more quickly and securely gain value from the immense amounts of data underused today," said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and co-chief operating officer, Dell Technologies. "With highly scalable and efficient infrastructure, enterprises can create a new wave of generative AI solutions that can reinvent their industries."

"We are at a historic moment, when incredible advances in generative AI are intersecting with enterprise demand to do more with less," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, NVIDIA. "With Dell Technologies, we've designed extremely scalable, highly efficient infrastructure that enables enterprises to transform their business by securely using their own data to build and operate generative AI applications."

The Korea Intellectual Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS) has been processing a bunch of trademark applications in recent weeks, submitted by Samsung Electronics Corporation. News outlets pointed out, earlier on this month, that the South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate was attempting to secure the term "Snowbolt" as a moniker for an unreleased HBM3P DRAM-based product. Industry insiders and Samsung representatives have indicated that high bandwidth memory (5 TB/s bandwidth speeds per stack) will be featured in upcoming cloud servers, high-performance and AI computing - slated for release later on in 2023.

A Samsung-focused news outlet, SamMobile, has reported (on May 15) of further trademark applications for next generation DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) products. Samsung has filed for two additional monikers - "Shinebolt" and "Flamebolt" - details published online show that these products share the same "designated goods" descriptors with the preceding "Snowbolt" registration: "DRAM modules with high bandwidth for use in high-performance computing equipment, artificial intelligence, and supercomputing equipment" and "DRAM with high bandwidth for use in graphic cards." Kye Hyun Kyung, CEO of Samsung Semiconductor, has been talking up his company's ambitions of competing with rival TSMC in providing cutting edge component technology, especially in the field of AI computing. It is too early to determine whether these "-bolt" DRAM products will be part of that competitive move, but it is good to know that speedier memory is on the way - future generation GPUs are set to benefit.

TrendForce's latest research indicates that, as production cuts to DRAM and NAND Flash have not kept pace with weakening demand, the ASP of some products is expected to decline further in 2Q23. DRAM prices are projected to fall 13~18%; NAND Flash is expected to fall between 8~13%.

TrendForce reports that the significant drop in DRAM prices was mostly attributed to high inventory levels of DDR4 and LPDDR5 as PC DRAM, server DRAM, and mobile DRAM collectively account for over 85% of DRAM consumption. Meanwhile, the market share for DDR5 remains relatively low.

Customers from Japan to Ecuador and Sweden are using NVIDIA DGX H100 systems like AI factories to manufacture intelligence. They're creating services that offer AI-driven insights in finance, healthcare, law, IT and telecom—and working to transform their industries in the process. Among the dozens of use cases, one aims to predict how factory equipment will age, so tomorrow's plants can be more efficient.

Called Green Physics AI, it adds information like an object's CO2 footprint, age and energy consumption to SORDI.ai, which claims to be the largest synthetic dataset in manufacturing.

Giga Computing, a subsidiary of GIGABYTE and an industry leader in high-performance servers, server motherboards, and workstations, today announced continued collaboration with GRAID Technology, and the creation of GIGABYTE R Series servers to overcome NVMe bottlenecks in storage applications. Online shopping, financial trading, editing high-resolution images, and AI-generated content have all become parts of everyday life. Enterprise companies are now developing better server solutions with faster compute speeds, greater energy efficiency, and more secure data protection. Giga Computing focuses on the design of computing hardware for GIGABYTE servers and works with GRAID Technology to develop integration solutions that disrupt the storage market. Together they have created next-generation servers and NVMe controllers that will become the new standards for RAID across NVMe SSDs.

Traditional RAID technologies have become a bottleneck for NVMe SSD performance, so GRAID developed the SupremeRAID high-speed RAID card which Giga Computing used to develop a comprehensive solution. The GIGABYTE R283-S92 server became the first server to support the SupremeRAID SR-1010 RAID card. In addition, all future GIGABYTE R283 and R183 servers will incorporate this optimization and become servers with the highest compatibility for GRAID's next-generation technologies. After installing SupremeRAID SR-1010, the user simply installs the corresponding driver and software on the operating system to activate the virtual controllers on the NVMe SSD, process storage and computing functions, and satisfy the ultra-high-performance requirements for all types of workloads.

Alphacool expands the portfolio of the Enterprise Solutions series for GPU water coolers and presents the new ES NV A100 80 GB PCIe, ES RTX A4000 with backplate and ES RTX 6000 Ada 48 GB.

To best dissipate the enormous waste heat of this GPU generation, the cooler is positioned close to the components to be cooled in an exemplary manner. The fin structure has been adapted and allows a very good water flow while increasing the cooling surface. The modified jetplate with improved inflow engine ensures optimal distribution of water on the cooling fins. The fully chromed copper base is resistant to acids, scratches and damages. The matte carbon finish gives the cooler a noble appearance. At the same time, this makes it interesting for private users who want to do without aRGB lighting.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment, spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments, including dedicated and shared IT environments, increased 16.3% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2022 (4Q22) to $24.1 billion. Spending on cloud infrastructure continues to outgrow the non-cloud segment although the latter had strong growth in 4Q22 as well, increasing 9.4% year over year to $18.7 billion. For the full year, cloud infrastructure grew 19.4% to $87.7 billion, while non-cloud grew 13.6% to $66.7 billion. The market continues to benefit from high demand, large backlogs, rising prices, and an improving infrastructure supply chain.

Although NAND suppliers have continued to roll back production, there is still an oversupply of NAND Flash as demand for products such as servers, smartphones, and notebooks is still too weak. Therefore, TrendForce predicts that the ASP of NAND Flash will continue to fall in 2Q23, though that decline may shrink to 5~10%. The key to supply and demand returning to a market equilibrium lies in whether NAND suppliers can cut back on production even more. TrendForce believes if demand remains stable, then the ASP of NAND Flash will have an opportunity to rebound in 4Q23; if demand is weaker than expected, then ASP will take longer to recover.

Client SSD: Currently, PC OEM's have managed to liquidate most of their component inventory, and are now gearing up in preparation for mid-year sales events. Suppliers are cutting prices to clear out their inventories of PCIe Gen 3 SSDs, which are gradually being phased out. Meanwhile, prices of PCIe Gen 4 SSDs continue to face downward pressure due to a slow intake of new customer orders. The continuous decline of QLC products in 1Q23 has also dragged down the prices of TLC products, and there is relatively little room for prices to keep falling in 2Q23. While it still remains unclear whether or not demand will recover, TrendForce projects that the prices of PC client SSDs will drop 5~10% in 2Q23.

In response to the increasing demand for powerful computing that can be relied on in a wide range of even the most challenging installation environments, leading industrial computing manufacturer and solution provider, OnLogic (www.onlogic.com), has unveiled their Helix 401 fanless industrial computer. The compact device is designed for use in edge computing, industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT), and many other emerging applications and will make its public debut at Embedded World 2023.

"You may never see them, but industrial computers are everywhere, working diligently to power technology solutions of every shape and size. These systems need to be small and reliable while still being just as powerful as high-end desktop machines," says Mike Walsh, Senior Product Manager at OnLogic. "The Helix 401 balances size and performance while providing a wide range of configuration possibilities to help users tailor it to their specific application. It's small enough to fit in your hand, similar in size to Intel's popular NUC, but capable enough to drive advanced automation solutions and power the next great smart agriculture, building automation or energy management innovation."

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is announcing the latest addition to its revolutionary ultra-high performance, high-density petascale class all-flash NVMe server family. Supermicro systems in this high-performance storage product family will support the next-generation EDSFF form factor, including the E3.S and E1.S devices, in form factors that accommodate 16- and 32 high-performance PCIe Gen 5 NVMe drive bays.

The initial offering of the updated product line will support up to one-half of a petabyte of storage space in a 1U 16 bay rackmount system, followed by a full petabyte of storage space in a 2U 32 bay rackmount system for both Intel and AMD PCIe Gen 5 platforms. All of the Supermicro systems that support either the E1.S or E3.s form factors enable customers to realize the benefits in various application-optimized servers.

DFI, a global leader in embedded motherboards and industrial computers, today announced that they will be participating in Embedded World 2023 and joining Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. to showcase the world's first SBC equipped with the high-performance Qualcomm QRB5165 processor. With high integration capability and anti-vibration features, the product can be applied in fields such as industrial automation and AMR. It is expected to increase the overall AI edge computing efficiency and bring more capabilities to the industry.

For the first time during the three-day Embedded World 2023 exhibition, DFI will integrate the QRB551 industrial-grade motherboard built with the Qualcomm Robotics RB5 platform with 5G connectivity and AMR requirements. The solution will be applied to a smart factory environment while executing appearance recognition, defect detection, and human body posture recognition, which are commonly seen in industrial automation.

Phison Electronics, a global leader in NAND flash and storage solutions, announced today the launch of IMAGIN+, an upgraded platform offering R&D resource sharing and ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) design services for NAND flash controllers, storage solutions, PMIC, and Redrivers/Retimers. The introduction of IMAGIN+ comes during the Embedded World Exhibition & Conference (March 14-16) in Nuremberg, a premier global event for the embedded community.

Phison's rejuvenated platform, bolstered by more than two decades of research and development expertise, empowers global partners and customers to create not just ASIC chips and NAND flash storage solutions but also to participate in the growth of a thriving ecosystem of emerging technologies. Phison understands that success in today's fast-paced market requires more than just providing NAND storage solutions; it requires the ability to influence and shape the industry through signal integrity and power management ICs, Compute Express Link and other value-added offerings.

ASUS today announced that Taiwan Web Services (TWS) has launched its AI 2.0 Foundation Model Consulting Services — a one-stop solution that integrates infrastructure, development environment, and professional technical team services for the development of next-generation AI. TWS is the first company in Taiwan to integrate a BLOOM (BigScience Large Open-science Open-access Multilingual Language Model) into a supercomputer.

Despite the recent rapid development of large language models (LLM) and generative AI, it is still tough for an enterprise to conduct an LLM project by itself. That is why using the TWS one-stop AI 2.0 Foundation Model Consulting Services is so powerful — it dramatically reduces the barriers to entry and allows enterprises to concentrate more on research and development projects.

Using the new TWS service, enterprises can immediately start building their own generative AI applications while simultaneously reducing their hardware equipment and human capital costs, as well as lowering development risk and time to completion.

Looking back at 2H22, as server OEMs slowed down the momentum of their product shipments, Chinese server buyers also held a conservative outlook on future demand and focused on inventory reduction. Thus, the flow of orders for enterprise SSDs remained sluggish. However, NAND Flash suppliers had to step up shipments of enterprise SSDs during 2H22 because the demand for storage components equipped in notebook (laptop) computers and smartphones had undergone very large downward corrections. Compared with other categories of NAND Flash products, enterprise SSDs represented the only significant source of bit consumption. Ultimately, due to the imbalance between supply and demand, the QoQ decline in prices of enterprise SSDs widened to 25% for 4Q22. This price plunge, in turn, caused the quarterly total revenue from enterprise SSDs to drop by 27.4% QoQ to around US$3.79 billion. TrendForce projects that the NAND Flash industry will again post a QoQ decline in the revenue from this product category for 1Q23.

For more than a decade, Intel and its partners have been on a mission to virtualize the world's networks, from the core to the RAN (radio access network) and out to the edge, moving them from fixed-function hardware onto programmable, software-defined platforms, making networks more agile while driving down their complexity and cost.

Now operators are looking to cross the next chasm in delivering cloud-native functionality for automating, managing and responding to an increasingly diverse mix of data and services, providing organizations with the intelligence needed at the edge of their operations. Today, Intel announced a range of products and solutions driving this transition and broad industry support from leading operators, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and independent software vendors (ISVs).

Today, KIOXIA America, Inc. announces its proud participation in the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Spaceborne Computer-2 (SBC-2) program. As part of the program, KIOXIA SSDs provide robust flash storage in HPE Edgeline and HPE ProLiant servers in a test environment to conduct scientific experiments aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

"By bringing KIOXIA's expertise and its SSDs, one of the industry's leading NAND flash capabilities, with HPE Spaceborne Computer-2, together we are pushing the boundaries of scientific discovery and innovation at the most extreme edge."

AMD and Arm have been gaining up on Intel in the server CPU market in the past few years, and the margins of the share that AMD had won over were especially large in 2022 as datacenter operators and server brands began finding that solutions from the number-2 maker growing superior to those of the long-time leader, according to Frank Kung, DIGITIMES Research analyst focusing primarily on the server industry, who anticipates that AMD's share will well stand above 20% in 2023, while Arm will get 8%.

Prices are one of the three major drivers that resulted in datacenter operators and server brands switching to AMD. Comparing server CPUs from AMD and Intel with similar numbers of cores, clockspeed, and hardware specifications, the price tags of most of the former's products are at least 30% cheaper than the latter's, and the differences could go as high as over 40%, Kung said.