We are delighted to announce our support for the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot, a vital initiative highlighted in the President's Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. This initiative aligns with our commitment to broaden AI research and spur innovation by providing greater computing resources to AI researchers and engineers in academia and non-profit sectors. We look forward to contributing to the pilot and sharing insights that can help inform the envisioned full-scale NAIRR.

The NAIRR's objective is to democratize access to the computational tools essential for advancing AI in critical areas such as safety, reliability, security, privacy, environmental challenges, infrastructure, health care, and education. Advocating for such a resource has been a longstanding goal of ours, one that promises to equalize the field of AI research and stimulate innovation across diverse sectors. As a commissioner on the National Security Commission on AI (NSCAI), I worked with colleagues on the committee to propose an early conception of the NAIRR, underlining our nation's need for this resource as detailed in the NSCAI Final Report. Concurrently, we enthusiastically supported a university-led initiative pursuing a national computing resource. It's rewarding to see these early ideas and endeavors now materialize into a tangible entity.

AMD's lineup of Radeon and Instinct GPUs, including the flagship RX 7900 XTX/XT, the professional-grade PRO W7900, and the upcoming Instinct MI300, are facing sales prohibitions in China, according to an alleged sales advisory guide from Dell. This restriction mirrors the earlier ban on NVIDIA's RTX 4090, underscoring the increasing export limitations U.S.-based companies face for high-end semiconductor products that could be repurposed for military and strategic applications. Notably, Dell's report lists several AMD Instinct accelerators, which are integral to data center infrastructure, and Radeon GPUs, which are widely used in PCs, indicating the broad impact of the advisory.

The ban includes discrete GPUs like AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT, which, despite their data-center potential, may still be sold under specific "NEC" eligibility. This status allows for continued sales in restricted regions like sales of NVIDIA's RTX 4090. However, the process to secure NEC eligibility is lengthy, potentially leading to supply shortages and increased GPU prices—a trend already observed with the RX 7900 XTX in China, where it's become a high-end alternative in light of the RTX 4090's scarcity and inflated pricing. The Dell sales advisory also lists that sales of the aforementioned products are banned in 22 countries, including Russia, Iran, Iraq, and others listed below.

Increasing its HPL score from 1.02 Eflop/s in November 2022 to an impressive 1.194 Eflop/s on this list, Frontier was able to improve upon its score after a stagnation between June 2022 and November 2022. Considering exascale was only a goal to aspire to just a few years ago, a roughly 17% increase here is an enormous success. Additionally, Frontier earned a score of 9.95 Eflop/s on the HLP-MxP benchmark, which measures performance for mixed-precision calculation. This is also an increase over the 7.94 EFlop/s that the system achieved on the previous list and nearly 10 times more powerful than the machine's HPL score. Frontier is based on the HPE Cray EX235a architecture and utilizes AMD EPYC 64C 2 GHz processors. It also has 8,699,904 cores and an incredible energy efficiency rating of 52.59 Gflops/watt. It also relies on gigabit ethernet for data transfer.

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).

The 60th edition of the TOP500 reveals that the Frontier system is still the only true exascale machine on the list.

With an HPL score of 1.102 EFlop/s, the Frontier machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) did not improve upon the score it reached on the June 2022 list. That said, Frontier's near-tripling of the HPL score received by second-place winner is still a major victory for computer science. On top of that, Frontier demonstrated a score of 7.94 EFlop/s on the HPL-MxP benchmark, which measures performance for mixed-precision calculation. Frontier is based on the HPE Cray EX235a architecture and it relies on AMD EPYC 64C 2 GHz processor. The system has 8,730,112 cores and a power efficiency rating of 52.23 gigaflops/watt. It also relies on gigabit ethernet for data transfer.

Supermicro, a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is announcing that NEC Corporation has selected over 116 Supermicro GPU servers that contain dual socket 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and each with eight NVIDIA A100 80 GB GPUs. As a result, the Supermicro GPU server line can include the latest and most powerful Intel Xeon scalable processors and the most advanced AI GPUs from NVIDIA.

"Supermicro is thrilled to deliver an additional 580 PFLOPS of AI training power to its worldwide AI installations," said Charles Liang, president, and CEO, Supermicro. "Supermicro GPU servers have been installed at NEC Corporation and are used to conduct state-of-the-art AI research. Our servers are designed for the most demanding AI workloads using the highest-performing CPUs and GPUs. We continue to work with leading customers worldwide to achieve their business objectives faster and more efficiently with our advanced rack-scale server solutions."

Intel today announced the first phase of its plans to invest as much as 80 billion euros in the European Union over the next decade along the entire semiconductor value chain - from research and development (R&D) to manufacturing to state-of-the art packaging technologies. Today's announcement includes plans to invest an initial 17 billion euros into a leading-edge semiconductor fab mega-site in Germany, to create a new R&D and design hub in France, and to invest in R&D, manufacturing and foundry services in Ireland, Italy, Poland and Spain. With this landmark investment, Intel plans to bring its most advanced technology to Europe, creating a next-generation European chip ecosystem and addressing the need for a more balanced and resilient supply chain.

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel, said: "Our planned investments are a major step both for Intel and for Europe. The EU Chips Act will empower private companies and governments to work together to drastically advance Europe's position in the semiconductor sector. This broad initiative will boost Europe's R&D innovation and bring leading-edge manufacturing to the region for the benefit of our customers and partners around the world. We are committed to playing an essential role in shaping Europe's digital future for decades to come."

NVIDIA today announced NVIDIA Quantum-2, the next generation of its InfiniBand networking platform, which offers the extreme performance, broad accessibility and strong security needed by cloud computing providers and supercomputing centers.

The most advanced end-to-end networking platform ever built, NVIDIA Quantum-2 is a 400 Gbps InfiniBand networking platform that consists of the NVIDIA Quantum-2 switch, the ConnectX-7 network adapter, the BlueField-3 data processing unit (DPU) and all the software that supports the new architecture.

Sharp NEC Display Solutions, a global leader in the projector and display market, today announced the availability of its E Series to its dvLED portfolio. The E Series offers a wide array of available pixel pitches, from 1.2 mm to 1.8 mm, and is ideal for indoor installations in corporate, education and House of Worship environments for customers looking to upgrade current digital signage.

dvLED walls offer larger, brighter images compared to single LCD display options, and can be built in virtually any configuration. Like building blocks, dvLED solutions are able to be built to fit a specific space or purpose, and are designed without seams for one continuous image. "Installing a dvLED wall depends on a wide range of factors, and we work with our customers to develop a cost-effective, long-term signage solution," said Mark Miller, product specialist for Sharp NEC Display Solutions. "Our new E Series is ideal for the customer that needs an impactful digital signage solution at a lower price point, with the backing of an exceptional product warranty and customer service of a company like Sharp/NEC."

NVIDIA today announced that the Italian inter-university consortium CINECA—one of the world's most important supercomputing centers—will use the company's accelerated computing platform to build the world's fastest AI supercomputer.

The new "Leonardo" system, built with Atos, is expected to deliver 10 exaflops of FP16 AI performance to enable advanced AI and HPC converged application use cases. Featuring nearly 14,000 NVIDIA Ampere architecture-based GPUs and NVIDIA Mellanox HDR 200 Gb/s InfiniBand networking, Leonardo will propel Italy as the global leader in AI and high performance computing research and innovation.

Intel today unveiled the suite of new security features for the upcoming 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable platform, code-named "Ice Lake." Intel is doubling down on its Security First Pledge, bringing its pioneering and proven Intel Software Guard Extension (Intel SGX) to the full spectrum of Ice Lake platforms, along with new features that include Intel Total Memory Encryption (Intel TME), Intel Platform Firmware Resilience (Intel PFR) and new cryptographic accelerators to strengthen the platform and improve the overall confidentiality and integrity of data.

Data is a critical asset both in terms of the business value it may yield and the personal information that must be protected, so cybersecurity is a top concern. The security features in Ice Lake enable Intel's customers to develop solutions that help improve their security posture and reduce risks related to privacy and compliance, such as regulated data in financial services and healthcare.

NEC has just announced a new laptop sporting an AMD Ryzen 7 Extreme Edition CPU. The NEC Lavie N15 is only available in a single color on its AMD configuration, but there's also an Intel Core i7-10510U option available in three different color options. The interesting part about this Ryzen 7 Extreme Edition is that there's nothing even remotely extreme about it, as far as can be told: it's shipping with the exact same specifications and frequencies as the non-Extreme Ryzen 7 4800U: 8 cores, 16 threads, 1.8 GHz base and 4.2 GHz boost.

The first hints towards the existence of such a CPU surfaced back in May. At the time, the leaked Futuremark database entry which identified the CPU as a mobile Ryzen 7 Extreme Edition painted the base clock at 1.8 GHz with a 4.3 GHz Boost. Apparently, that meagre 100 MHz top frequency increase has since been scaled back. It's extremely unclear if there is any performance or power efficiency benefit to this Extreme Edition CPU (it could be a cherry-picked version with better thermal and electric characteristics than the average 4800U), or if there are some increased allowances in the TDP compared to the 15 W 4800U (typically set with TDPs of 15 W, though the cTDP supports a 10-25 W range). Or it could be just a NEC-specific version of an AMD CPU to improve market perception and reception - a rebadged 4800U, if you will.

NEC Corporation, a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies, and D-Wave Systems Inc., the leader in quantum computing systems, software and services, today announced that they have begun joint activities to combine the compute power of NEC's systems with the quantum computing power of D-Wave's systems, software and cloud service to bring those combined capabilities to customers in Japan. NEC has made a US$10 million investment in D-Wave in connection with this initiative.

The two companies will work together on the development of hybrid quantum/classical technologies and services that combine the best features of classical computers and quantum computers; the development of new hybrid applications that make use of those services; and joint marketing and sales go-to-market activities to promote quantum computing.

NEC today announced the launch of the MultiSync PA311D, a new 31-inch IPS wide color gamut display with a 4K (4096x2160) resolution. "The MultiSync PA311D will take its place as our flagship monitor in the PA Series of professional desktop displays," said Kevin Christopherson, Director of Product Marketing at NEC Display Solutions. "It provides higher resolution, along with better black levels and contrast. Further, the PA311D includes USB-C connectivity with 65 W charging and several new cutting-edge features to meet the color-critical needs of professional graphic designers, photographers and video producers."

Global industrial and IoT hardware manufacturer Logic Supply has combined the latest vision processing, security protocols, wireless communication technologies, and proven cloud architectures to create the Karbon 300 rugged fanless computer. The system has been engineered to help innovators overcome the limitations of deploying reliable computer hardware in challenging environments.

"Computing at the edge is increasingly at the core of today's Industry 4.0 and Industrial IoT solutions," says Logic Supply VP of Products Murat Erdogan. "These devices are being deployed in environments that would quickly destroy traditional computer hardware. The builders and creators we work with require a careful combination of connectivity, processing and environmental protections. With Karbon 300, we're providing the ideal mix of capabilities to help make the next generation of industry-shaping innovation a reality, and enable innovators to truly challenge what's possible."

NEC Display Solutions of America, Inc., a leading provider of commercial LCD displays and projectors, today announced the V554Q, a large-format 4K UHD display packed with commercial-grade features and a slim new design to blend into any environment. Like other new models in the C & V Series, the V554Q features an industry-best anti-reflective high haze coating, full external control and network capabilities through LAN, and SpectraView Engine Technology, which allows for complete color control.

"We've listened to our customers in designing the V554Q to be the best 55-inch display tailored for commercial and corporate signage needs," said Ben Hardy, Senior Product Manager at NEC Display Solutions. "The V554Q has best-in-class, high-haze anti-glare coating, updated connectivity, and both landscape and portrait orientation support to seamlessly fit any digital signage environment."

NEC Display Solutions of America, Inc., a leading provider of commercial LCD displays and projectors, today announced the availability of the 27" MultiSync EA271U, a full-featured, business-class desktop display delivering superior 4K UHD image quality and enhanced USB-C connectivity.

The EA271U features a 3-sided ultra-narrow bezel of just 1.00mm, designed to eliminate distractions while delivering a large desktop workspace that enhances productivity for high-end corporate and small-business customers. The EA271U is also compatible with NEC Display's SprectraViewII color calibration tool, which is ideal for healthcare and education users who need advanced imaging quality.

NEC Display Solutions of America, Inc., a leading provider of commercial displays and projectors, today announced the availability of two new desktop monitors: the MultiSync EA271Q and MultiSync P243W.

"The 27" MultiSync EA271Q significantly updates our popular E275WMi monitor, and the 24" MultiSync P243W refreshes the P242W," said Art Marshall, Senior Product Manager for Desktop Displays at NEC Display Solutions. "These two new models provide users sleeker, more productive monitors and show our ongoing commitment to technological innovation and to helping our customers improve their workflows."

NEC Display Solutions of America, Inc., a leading provider of commercial LCD displays and projectors, today announced the launch of the MultiSync PA271Q, a new professional 27-inch wide color gamut monitor.

"The MultiSync PA271Q replaces the PA272W, one of our most popular professional wide color gamut desktop displays," said Art Marshall, Senior Product Manager for Desktop Displays at NEC Display Solutions. "It provides much better black levels and contrast, and new cutting-edge features have been added to provide improved color coverage to meet the color-critical needs of the print production, digital photography, photo editing, and video production markets, among others."

NEC Display Solutions of America, Inc., a leading provider of commercial LCD displays and projectors, today announced the launch of two 27-inch desktop monitors, the MultiSync E271N and the MultiSync EA271F.

"The MultiSync E271N and the MultiSync EA271F are packed with essential features and designed with business users in mind," said Art Marshall, Senior Product Manager for Desktop Displays at NEC Display Solutions. "Both of these models provide a large desktop workspace with Full HD resolution; lower pixel density, which makes text easier to read; and a three-sided narrow bezel design, which results in fewer distractions."

NEC Corporation (TSE: 6701) today announced the launch of a new high-end HPC product line, the SX-Aurora TSUBASA. This new platform drastically increases processing performance and scalability on real world applications, aiming for the traditional application areas, such as science and engineering, but also targeting the new fields of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data analytics. With this new technology, NEC opens supercomputing to a wide range of new markets, in addition to the traditional HPC arena.

Utilizing cutting-edge chip integration technology, the new product features a complete multi-core vector processor in the form of a card-type Vector Engine (VE), which is developed based on NEC's high-density interface technology and efficient cooling technology. Kimihiko Fukuda, Executive Vice President, NEC Corporation, said, "The new product addresses the needs of scalar computational capability while still providing the efficiency of a vector architecture. This is accomplished through a tightly integrated complete vector system in the form of a Vector Engine Card."

NEC Display Solutions of America, Inc., a leading provider of commercial LCD displays and projectors, today announced the availability of the 24" MultiSync PA243W professional desktop display.

"The MultiSync PA243W updates the PA242W, one of our most popular professional wide color gamut desktop displays," said Art Marshall, Senior Product Manager for Desktop Displays at NEC Display Solutions. "New cutting-edge features have been added to provide improved color coverage to meet the color-critical needs of the print production, digital photography, photo editing, and video production markets, among others."

Adding to its staple of monitor offerings, NEC has just announced the EX341R Curved Ultrawide QHD Display 34" display, which boasts a 3440 x 1440 resolution, an 1800R curvature, and an SVA panel. The panel makes do with a 5ms response time, which while not being great also isn't the worst we've seen on this kind of panels. It also boasts of 16.7 million colors, a 3,000:1 contrast ratio, and brightness is rated at 290 cd/m².

The EX341R is certified for Low Blue Light Content and Flicker-Free operation, which should help reduce eye strain and other health issues. It also features NEC's ControlSync technology, which works with DisplayPort's daisy-chain functionality to simplify multiple monitor configurations; the monitor also features a picture by picture mode. As to connections, the EX341R has 2xHDMI ports, 4xUSB 3.0 ports, and 1xDisplayPort 1.2 I/O.

NEC Display Solutions of America, a leading provider of commercial LCD display and projector solutions, today announced the MultiSync EA245WMi display, capable of simplifying multiple-monitor configurations with an improved, sleek cabinet and 3-sided ultra-narrow bezel design. The new 24-inch widescreen model features IPS panel technology, LED backlighting with wide viewing angles (178° horizontal/vertical), and 3 ultra-narrow bezels, each less than 1 mm thick, in order to create desktop configurations with little distraction so users in corporate, command and control, and financial industries can focus on their work.

Designed for multiple-monitor configurations, NEC's exclusive ControlSync technology allows users to automatically control settings on up to six displays from one primary monitor using the included ControlSync cable. Additionally, the DisplayPort 1.2 daisy chain capability allows for connectivity of up to four monitors through one DisplayPort 1.2 input, simplifying cable connections.

NEC Display Solutions of America, a leading provider of commercial LCD display and projector solutions, announced today the PA322UHD-2 display, which includes all the features of the existing PA322UHD model and now updates the option slot with support for 4K UHD inputs, including an installed, switchable DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0 option. The Open Pluggable Specification (OPS)-compliant option slot gives videographers, photographers, print production specialists and others added flexibility to use the PA322UHD-2 in an even wider range of existing workflows.

The display uses a wide gamut white LED backlight and an IGZO technology IPS-type LCD panel that delivers excellent image quality with lower power consumption than comparable LCD displays while delivering 99.2 percent coverage of the Adobe RGB color space. "Pros in color-critical fields now have more options for 4K UHD over a single cable, including the latest HDMI 2.0 standard," said Art Marshall, Senior Product Manager of Professional and Medical Displays at NEC Display. "The 4K UHD-enhanced OPS connects to more devices for greater productivity and creativity."