Intel's Investor Relations head Trey Campbell, in a "fire-side chat" with top investors at the Cowen Virtual Technology Media and Telecom Conference, reaffirmed Intel's commitment to its server processor roadmap. Intel is on course to introducing its 10 nm Xeon "Ice Lake-SP" enterprise processor family by the end of 2020, and "Sapphire Rapids" sometime within 2021.

"Ice Lake-SP" processor will introduce the new "Whitley" platform, with a new 4,189-pin LGA socket, which leverages PCI-Express gen 4.0. While retaining the DDR4 memory standard, the memory interface has been broadened to 8-channel, and reference memory clock speeds are expected to be increased to DDR4-3200. The company's "Sapphire Rapids" processor is expected to shake up the market, as it introduces next-generation I/O, when it launches alongside the "Eagle Stream" platform in 2021. The processor will be built on the refined 10 nm+ silicon fabrication node, feature "Willow Cove" CPU cores, and I/O feature set that sees the introduction of DDR5 memory standard, and PCI-Express gen 5.0.

ASUS, the leading IT company in server systems, server motherboards, and workstations today announced that ASUS servers achieved the highest rankings on the SPEC Power suite of benchmarks for energy efficiency performed by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC). ASUS selected the Intel-based RS720-E9-RS8 and AMD-based RS500A-E10-PS4 rack servers for these benchmarks to show the power and performance characteristics of ASUS servers on both CPU platforms and to demonstrate to customers how they can achieve faster deployments and higher energy efficiency for their IT infrastructures. These servers were tested using both Windows Server and Linux — the most popular operating systems used in data centers — to ensure the benchmarks results are relevant to real-world performance and operating conditions. These results are current as of April 16, 2020.

Eurocom's Tornado F7 SE Mobile Server powered by 8 Cores/16 Threads Xeon CPU, 128 GB ECC memory and up to 28 TB of storage is designed for rapid deployment anytime, anywhere.

The Tornado F7 Server Edition is an all-in-one, single-server, small form factor, laptop-based server form Eurocom that is designed for rapid, on-the-go ad-hoc deployment. This Mobile Server has its own internal UPS/battery pack and is ready to go right out of the box, providing On-the-Go capabilities where fast deployment and high mobility of server capabilities are needed.

Huawei may become the 4th player in the GPU server market if a new report by Korean news outlet The Elec is to be believed. The Elec has received reports from Industry Sources that Huawei is readying to enter the market in 2020, this will put them in direct competition with industry leader NVIDIA along with AMD and newcomer Intel. Huawei Korea will reportedly assign the project to the new Cloud and AI Business Group division, talent scouting has already begun with rumors of current and former NVIDIA staff getting poached.

Huawei is no newcomer to the server market having already launched the Ascend 910 one of the worlds most advanced AI accelerators in August 2019. The Ascend 910 outperforms the Tesla V100 by a factor of two, and is developed on a more advanced 7 nm+ technology compared to the 12 nm Tesla V100. In January 2020 Huawei launched their next server product the Kunpeng 920 a big data CPU along with a new server lineup featuring the chip. Considering Huawei's experience and resources in the server market along with Intel's entrance the GPU server landscape is set to become very competitive.

ASUS, the leading IT Company in server systems, server motherboards, workstations and workstation motherboards today announced exclusive Power Balancer technology to support the new 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processor (extended Cascade Lake-SP refresh SKUs) across all server product lineups, including the RS720/720Q/700 E9, RS520/500 E9 and ESC8000/4000 G4 series server systems and Z11 server motherboards.

In complex applications, such as high-performance computing (HPC), AI or edge computing, balancing performance and power consumption is always a challenge. With Power Balancer technology and the new 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processor, ASUS servers save up to 31 watts power per node on specific workloads and achieve even better efficiency with more servers in large-scale environments, significantly decreasing overall power consumption for a much lower total cost of ownership and optimized operations.

Kingston Technology today announced the Data Center DC1000B M.2 NVMe SSD, optimized for server boot drive applications, featuring power-loss protection (PLP). Kingston's Data Centre DC1000B is a high-performance M.2 (2280) NVMe PCIe SSD using the latest Gen 3.0 x 4 PCIe interface with 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. DC1000B offers data centres a cost-effective boot drive solution with the reassurance that they are purchasing an SSD designed for server use. The DC1000B is ideally suited as an internal boot drive for use in high-volume rack-mount servers, as well as for use in purpose-built systems that require a high-performance M.2 SSD that includes on-board power loss protection (PLP).

M.2 NVMe SSDs are evolving within the data centre, providing efficiencies in booting servers to preserve valuable front-loading drive bays for data storage. Whitebox and Tier 1 Server OEMs are beginning to equip server motherboards with one, or sometimes two, M.2 sockets for boot purposes. While the M.2 form factor was originally designed as a client SSD form factor, its small physical size and high performance make it attractive for server use. Not all SSD are created equal and using a client SSD in a server application may result in poor, inconsistent performance.

There were many rumors about Intel's 10 nm CPUs, many of them indicating that Intel will not manufacture 10 nm CPUs for desktop users, due to the 10 nm manufacturing process being in a bad shape. Those rumors were later countered by Intel, claiming that 10 nm is doing very well on improving yields and that we will see desktop CPUs based on the new node very soon.

Thanks to the Linux kernel mailing list (LKML), we now know that support for Ice Lake desktop and server CPUs has been added. A Patch titled "Add more CPU model number for Ice Lake" has many details about variants of Ice Lake with names like Ice Lake X for server Xeon CPU, Ice Lake D for Xeon D CPUs, Ice Lake L for mobile, and regular Ice Lake for desktop series of CPUs. This confirms Intel's claims that Ice Lake is on its way to desktop and server users in the near future. Possible launch date on these CPUs would be sometime in 2020, when Xe graphics cards are launched in July/August, so Intel could bundle both processors on the same 10 nm node.

AMD invited TechPowerUp to their launch event and editor's day coverage of Zen 2 EPYC processors based on the 7 nm process. The event was a day-long affair which included product demos and tours, and capped off with an official launch presentation which we are able to share with you live as the event goes on. Zen 2 with the Ryzen 3000-series processors ushered in a lot of excitement, and for good reason too as our own reviews show, but questions remained on how the platform would scale to the other end of the market. We already knew, for example, that AMD secured many contracts based on their first-generation EPYC processors, and no doubt the IPC increase and expected increased core count would cause similar, if not higher, interest here. We also expect to know shortly about the various SKUs and pricing involved, and also if AMD wants to shed more light on the future of the Threadripper processor family. Read below, and continue past the break, for our live coverage.21:00 UTC: Lisa Su is on the stage at the Palace of Fine Arts events venue in San Francisco to present AMD's latest developments on EPYC for datacenters, using the Zen 2 microarchitecture.21:10 UTC: AMD focuses not just on delivering a single chip, but it's goal is to deliver a complete solution for the enterprise.

EUROCOM Tornado F7 Server On-the-Go. The Tornado F7 Server Edition is an all-in-one, single-server, small form factor, laptop-based server form Eurocom that is designed for rapid, on-the-go ad hoc deployment. This Mobile Server has its own internal UPS/battery pack and is ready to go right out-of-the box, providing On-the-Go capabilities where fast deployment and high mobility of server capabilities is critical.

At 4 kg (9lbs), the Tornado F7 weighs much less than traditional rack-mounted servers and is ideal for fast set-up and relocation of server environments consisting of multiple VMs, anywhere.

As if the mother of all ironies, prior to its effective death-sentence dealt by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Huawei's server business developed an ambitious product roadmap for its Fusion Server family, aligning with Intel's enterprise processor roadmap. It describes in great detail the key features of these processors, such as core-counts, platform, and I/O. The "Sapphire Rapids" processor will introduce the biggest I/O advancements in close to a decade, when it releases sometime in 2021.

With an unannounced CPU core-count, the "Sapphire Rapids-SP" processor will introduce DDR5 memory support to the data-center, which aims to double bandwidth and memory capacity over the DDR4 generation. The processor features an 8-channel (512-bit wide) DDR5 memory interface. The second major I/O introduction is PCI-Express gen 5.0, which not only doubles bandwidth over gen 4.0 to 32 Gbps per lane, but also comes with a constellation of data-center-relevant features that Intel is pushing out in advance as part of the CXL Interconnect. CXL and PCIe gen 5 are practically identical.

Intel Corporation today reported first-quarter 2019 financial results. In the first quarter, the company generated approximately $5.0 billion in cash from operations, paid dividends of $1.4 billion and used $2.5 billion to repurchase 49 million shares of stock.

"Results for the first quarter were slightly higher than our January expectations. We shipped a strong mix of high-performance products and continued spending discipline while ramping 10nm and managing a challenging NAND pricing environment. Looking ahead, we're taking a more cautious view of the year, although we expect market conditions to improve in the second half," said Bob Swan, Intel CEO. "Our team is focused on expanding our market opportunity, accelerating our innovation and improving execution while evolving our culture. We aim to capitalize on key technology inflections that set us up to play a larger role in our customers' success, while improving returns for our owners."

Crucial , a leading global consumer brand of Micron Technology for memory and storage upgrades, today announced a new 32GB Nonvolatile DIMM (NVDIMM) to help companies preserve critical data in the event of a system power loss and limit costly downtime. The first Crucial NVDIMM to operate at 2933 MT/s, the new module provides companies powerful and persistent memory performance while reducing the amount of NVDIMMs needed in a server.

In fast-paced business environments, sales and customer satisfaction are decided in milliseconds. Crucial NVDIMMs give organisations the advantage when data transactions hang in the balance by fusing memory with on-module NAND, providing near-instant access with data persistence. In the event of a system power loss, the NVDIMM would back up DRAM data to the NAND with help from an ultracapacitator, its backup power source. Crucial NVDIMMs are compatible with the latest 2.5 inch drive bay and HHHL PCIe AgigA Tech PowerGEM ultracapacitors, enabling continual power to up to four NVDIMMs during power loss until a backup is completed.

Microsoft has announced their xCloud initiative, a game streaming effort that looks to bridge the gap between local and stream-based gaming. xCloud is looking to bring true, platform-agnostic gaming with much lower bandwidth requirements due to a number of technologies being researched and worked on by Microsoft. Chief among these are low-latency networking, encoding, and decoding advances - all crucial parts of the puzzle for solving latency and poor image quality issues. xCloud aims to allow for "high-quality experiences at the lowest possible bitrates that work across the widest possible networks" - with 4G and 5G support. For now, the test version of xCloud only requires a minimum 10 Mbps connection, which is already very impressive in abstract - though of course it would require more info on the rendering specs being delivered to the recipient's system for deeper analysis.

One big takeaway here is that this xCloud initiative is fully powered by AMD's own hardware - as it should be. Using AMD custom hardware such as that found within Microsoft's Xbox consoles takes away the work and investment in building even more emulation capabilities on a server level, which would only add additional overhead to the streaming service. By using AMD's own custom hardware, Microsoft circumvents this issue - but entrenches itself even more on AMD's own product portfolio, both now and in the foreseeable future.

GIGABYTE continues our active development of new AMD EPYC platforms with the release of the 2U 4 Node H261-Z60, the first AMD EPYC variant of our Density Optimized Server Series. The H261-Z60 combines 4 individual hot pluggable sliding node trays into a 2U server box. The node trays slide in and out easily from the rear of the unit.

EPYC Performance
Each node supports dual AMD EPYC 7000 series processors, with up to 32 cores, 64 threads and 8 channels of memory per CPU. Therefore, each node can feature up to 64 cores and 128 threads of compute power. Memory wise, each socket utilizes EPYC's 8 channels of memory with 1 x DIMM per channel / 8 x DIMMS per socket, for a total capacity of 16 x DIMMS per node (over 2TB of memory supported per each node ).

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. today announced that Super Micro Computer, Inc. has successfully qualified the MG07ACA Series 14TB and 12TB HDD SATA models on select Supermicro storage server platforms. Using a 9-disk, helium-sealed design, the new MG07ACA Series provides power-efficient capacity and storage density, which is now available on Supermicro's popular SuperStorage (SSG) line-up of server platforms. The MG07 Series industry-leading 14TB capacity allows data center customers a choice of storage server platform solutions available through Supermicro's extensive network of distributors as well as systems and solutions integrators.

"As we continue to develop solutions to meet the growing capacity needs of enterprise and cloud data center customers, Toshiba is pleased to be working with Supermicro on solutions utilizing our new MG07ACA Series helium-sealed HDD," said Kyle Yamamoto, Vice President of HDD Business Unit, Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. "Toshiba's innovative, power-efficient 9-disk design delivers the highest capacity available in the market today using conventional magnetic recording, and matches up well with Supermicro's highly-regarded lineup of server and storage solutions."

QNAP Systems, Inc. today launched the new 10GbE-ready TS-x63XU rack-mountable NAS (available in 4, 8, and 12-bay models with single and redundant power supply options) that features an AMD G-Series GX-420MC quad-core 2.0 GHz processor, 4GB DDR3L memory (upgradable to 16GB), and easy scalability, providing ideal storage solutions for bandwidth-demanding data center and virtualization applications.

Pre-installed with a single-port 10GbE 10GBASE-T network card (which also supports 10G/5G/2.5G/1G/100M data transfer) the TS-x63XU series delivers up to 1,038 MB/s read speed and 985 MB/s read with AES-NI encryption acceleration. Supporting SSD caching, tiered storage allocation, and excellent expandability with a QNAP 12-bay expansion enclosure, the TS-x63XU series is ideal for business organizations looking for a secure private cloud and efficient IT infrastructure for 10GbE networks.

ASUS, the leading IT Company in server systems, server motherboards, workstations and workstation motherboards, today announced support for the latest NVIDIA AI solutions with NVIDIA Tesla V100 Tensor Core 32GB GPUs and Tesla P4 on its accelerated computing servers.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is translating data into meaningful insights, services and scientific breakthroughs. The size of the neural networks powering this AI revolution has grown tremendously. For instance, today's state of the art neural network model for language translation, Google's MOE model has 8 billion parameters compared to 100 million parameters of models from just two years ago.

To handle these massive models, NVIDIA Tesla V100 offers a 32GB memory configuration, which is double that of the previous generation. Providing 2X the memory improves deep learning training performance for next-generation AI models by up to 50 percent and improves developer productivity, allowing researchers to deliver more AI breakthroughs in less time. Increased memory allows HPC applications to run larger simulations more efficiently than ever before.

Acer today announced the new Altos R880 F4 GPU server ahead of GTC Taiwan 2018. It can host up to eight NVIDIA Tesla V100 32GB SXM2 GPU accelerators, where every GPU pair includes one PCIe slot for high-speed interconnect.

The Acer Altos R880 F4 is a member of the HGX-T1 class of NVIDIA GPU-Accelerated Server Platforms. It can significantly enhance performance by using parallel computing power for various applications, including oil and gas, defense, financial services, research, manufacturing, media and entertainment, 3D rendering, deep learning, and mission-critical applications.

GIGABYTE has released a compelling new choice in storage servers with a unique combination of performance, capacity and flexibility: the S451-3R0. Powered by dual Intel Xeon Scalable processors and with a capacity of 36 x 3.5" + 2 x 2.5" SSD / HDD, the S451-3R0 provides the best balance of throughput and density, making it extremely suitable for block or object storage, streaming media and big data.

Dual Intel Xeon Scalable Processors
The S451-3R0 features dual Intel Xeon Scalable processors, with up to 28 cores per CPU, making it extremely suitable for storage applications where high performance or heavy workloads are required. Each CPU socket supports the highest CPU thermal design power requirement of 205W, as well as Intel's Omni-Path connection technology to eliminate CPU to network latency. Six memory channels per CPU with two DIMM slots per channel are supported for DDR4 memory. Maximum memory capacity will depend on your CPU model with a maximum of 1.5TB per CPU.

Today, QSAN Technology Inc. launched its two latest NAS servers, the 3U, 16-bay XN8016R and the 4U, 24-bay XN8024R. These two rackmount servers are the first members of the XCubeNAS family that supports both SAS and SATA drives, allowing users to further optimize performance based on their needs. XN8016R and XN8024R both come equipped with an Intel Xeon Quad-core processor, and DDR4 ECC 8GB Memory, both upgradeable to an impressive 128GB.

"These powerful rackmount servers are equipped with upgrades that allows growing businesses flexible scalability and faster data processing speeds," said Peggy Weng, NAS Product Manager at QSAN. "The new XCubeNAS servers come with comprehensive security solutions, such as SED support and WORM, iSCSI support to expedite virtualization applications, and multiple data backup solutions for businesses that protect critical and sensitive data," added Weng.

GIGABYTE, an industry leader in server hardware for high performance computing, has released two new powerful 4U GPU servers to bring massive parallel computing capabilities into your datacenter: the 8 x SXM2 GPU G481-S80, and the 10 x GPU G481-HA0. Both products offer some of the highest GPU density of this form factor available on the market.

As artificial intelligence is becoming more widespread in our daily lives, such as for image recognition, autonomous vehicles or medical research, more organizations need deep learning capabilities in their datacenter. Deep learning requires a powerful engine that can deal with the massive volumes of data processing required. GIGABYTE is proud to provide our customers with two new solutions for such an engine.

GIGABYTE, an industry leader in competitive, high performance server motherboards and systems, has refreshed its AMD EPYC 1U and 2U server line-up with a range updated options supporting different storage device combinations, with increased NVMe connectivity to integrate more dense, high bandwidth storage. These five systems are part of GIGABYTE's ready-to-integrate general purpose Rack Server family, equipped with the best power supplies and cooling fans and combining a high level of performance, energy efficiency and overall reliability for web hosting, mass storage, virtualized infrastructures, databases & analytics and other demanding applications.

GIGABYTE's AMD EPYC server systems are based on the 7000 series EPYC processor, offered as a SoC and incorporating a multi-die design with 32 cores per processor, 128 PCIe lanes and 8 channels of DDR4 memory. These features have allowed GIGABYTE to create a range of servers that pack a real punch in flexibility and expansion options. First released in July last year, adoption of GIGABYTE's AMD EPYC servers has been gaining momentum, lowering TCO for datacenters by offering an optional balance of compute, memory, I/O and security.

EK Water Blocks, the Slovenia-based premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer is announcing a dedicated EK-Annihilator EX/EP water block that is specifically developed for LGA 3647 (Socket P) Intel processors. The entire CPU block was designed from the ground up to fit the requirements of the new socket and to integrate multiple connectivity options for server rack requirements. With that said, the new server-grade CPU block is 1U chassis type compatible for use server and workstation type motherboards.

EK-Annihilator EX/EP
With Intel releasing the future generation of Skylake-based Xeon and Skylake-E HEDT CPUs with a larger LGA 3647 socket, came the need for a water block with a larger cold plate contact surface. The goal in designing of the new EK-Annihilator EX/EP CPU water block was to cover the entire IHS of Intel HEDT processors. An additional task was to make the new CPU block server ready with multiple connectivity options. The EK-Annihilator EX/EP water block features a total of 6 ports, which allow for versatile connectivity options. Two top ports are standard G1/4" threaded, while the side ports are G3/8" threaded.

GIGABYTE continues to strengthen its HPC system portfolio by today releasing the G190-G30, a 1U 4 x SXM2 GPU server. Building on the advantages of our current 1U GPU-server range, such as an airflow optimized rack mount, large thermal envelope and uncompromised flexibility, the G190-G30 has been developed to accommodate 4 x NVIDIA SXM2 Tesla V100 or P100 GPU accelerators with NVLink interconnection.

Using NVLink technology allows for higher bandwidth, more links, and improved scalability over PCIe for GPU to GPU interconnection. For example, a single NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU can support up to six NVLink links with a signaling rate of 25 GB/second in each direction, equaling a total bandwidth of 300 GB/sec - 10X the bandwidth of PCIe 3. The higher bandwidth and reduced latency allows the G190-G30 to unlock multi-GPU interconnectivity bottlenecks for better performance in intensive parallel computing applications.

Dell EMC announced three new servers designed for software-defined environments, edge and high-performance computing (HPC). The PowerEdge R6415, PowerEdge R7415 and PowerEdge R7425 expand the 14th generation of the Dell EMC PowerEdge server portfolio with new capabilities to address the demanding workload requirements of today's modern data center. All three rack servers with the AMD EPYC processor offer highly scalable platforms with outstanding total cost of ownership (TCO).

"As the bedrock of the modern data center, customers expect us to push server innovation further and faster" said Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, president, Server and Infrastructure Systems at Dell EMC. "As customers deploy more IoT solutions, they need highly capable and flexible compute at the edge to turn data into real-time insights; these new servers that are engineered to deliver that while lowering TCO."