I'm a big believer that the workstation industry has always been fast-paced and exciting. We've had a front row seat for more than 25 years helping creators, engineers, architects, researchers and more bring their ideas to life and make an impact on the world. Workstations have played a critical role here, viewed as a necessary tool to make the impossible possible. Now the world is buzzing with AI and generative AI (GenAI), and workstations are in the spotlight in a different way.

New Dell Technologies research shows that 65 to 75% of organizations are already reporting quantified outcomes with GenAI initiatives. As a result, approximately three-fourths of organizations are identifying incremental funding to support GenAI initiatives. This is consistent with the interest that we're seeing with workstations. Our Dell Precision workstations are no longer just tools, they're the engines of innovation. They let companies develop and fine-tune complex GenAI models locally before deploying them at scale.

Professionals working in harsh environments require not only rugged durability but portable solutions that don't weigh them down in the field. Dell Technologies' new Rugged product achieves this combination. In fact, it is the world's lightest 10-inch fully rugged Windows tablet. Featuring a robust ecosystem of accessories and hot-swappable batteries for extended performance, the 7030 Rugged Extreme Tablet was designed for workers who spend most of their time away from a desk. So, whether you're on the factory line, in a machine shop or atop a snowy mountain, the 7030 Rugged Extreme Tablet will make for the ultimate companion.

Dell's Most Portable Fully Rugged Tablet
Marrying durability and mobility, the 7030 Rugged Extreme Tablet is Dell's most portable fully rugged tablet. Its lightweight 2.2-pound chassis and convenient accessories mean the tablet won't feel unwieldy, so your muscles get relief during a long shift on the warehouse floor, at the scene of an accident or when navigating construction sites.

TrendForce reports that the ever-expanding dimensions of OLED products, combined with the ambitious plans of several top-tier brands, mean that 2023 could see OLED monitor shipments hitting a staggering 508,000 units—an astronomical YoY surge of 323%. Come 2024, the OLED landscape will be richer with more diverse product sizes and specifications. Add to that the debut of the 27-inch and 31.5-inch OLED panels by two leading Korean panel makers, and the arena is set for a showdown. Such dynamics are predicted to catapult OLED monitor shipments past the coveted one million unit threshold.

In terms of market share, Samsung is on track for a spirited push in OLED monitor shipments in 2H23, potentially capturing a market share of 27%—echoing LGE's performance. Not to be left behind, Dell is ardently pushing its 34-inch offering, hoping to clinch a market presence above 20%. Meanwhile, ASUS, having strategically positioned itself in the OLED monitor sector recently, is eyeing a market share nearing 9% this year.

Dell Technologies expands its Dell Generative AI Solutions portfolio, helping businesses transform how they work along every step of their generative AI (GenAI) journeys. "To maximize AI efforts and support workloads across public clouds, on-premises environments and at the edge, companies need a robust data foundation with the right infrastructure, software and services," said Jeff Boudreau, chief AI officer, Dell Technologies. "That's what we are building with our expanded validated designs, professional services, modern data lakehouse and the world's broadest GenAI solutions portfolio."

Customizing GenAI models to maximize proprietary data
The Dell Validated Design for Generative AI with NVIDIA for Model Customization offers pre-trained models that extract intelligence from data without building models from scratch. This solution provides best practices for customizing and fine-tuning GenAI models based on desired outcomes while helping keep information secure and on-premises. With a scalable blueprint for customization, organizations now have multiple ways to tailor GenAI models to accomplish specific tasks with their proprietary data. Its modular and flexible design supports a wide range of computational requirements and use cases, spanning training diffusion, transfer learning and prompt tuning.

According to the latest report from Nikkei, HP, the world's second-largest PC manufacturer after Lenovo, is making strategic shifts in its laptop production bases. In a move that reflects broader trends among tech giants, HP is collaborating with various Electronic Manufacturing Service (EMS) providers to move a significant part of its laptop production out of China to other countries such as Thailand, Mexico, and eventually Vietnam. For 2023 alone, the production outside of China is expected to range from a few million units up to 5 million, a noteworthy figure given HP's total global PC shipments of 55.2 million units. Commercial notebooks are slated for production in Mexico, catering to HP's primary market, North America, with consumer laptops made in Thailand. Additionally, a shift to Vietnam is on the horizon for 2024. Thailand's mature PC supplier ecosystem is anticipated to facilitate a smoother transition for HP.

HP's reconfiguration of manufacturing locations aligns with similar initiatives by other tech giants. Dell, for example, is also reducing its reliance on Chinese-made chips and aims to manufacture at least 20% of its laptops in Vietnam this year. Apple has likewise commenced MacBook production in the same country. Several factors are driving these relocations, with rising manufacturing costs in China, including labor recruitment challenges and increased labor costs, being key among them. Geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China also weigh in on these decisions, especially since the U.S. is a crucial market for both HP and Dell. Despite the diversification, HP reaffirms its commitment to continue operations in China, particularly in Chongqing, a significant laptop production hub since 2008.

During a recent demonstration, Intel showcased its cutting-edge packaging technologies, EMIB (embedded multi-die interconnect bridge) and Foveros, unveiling the highly-anticipated Meteor Lake processor with integrated LPDDR5X memory. This move appears to align with Apple's successful integration of LPDDR memory into its M1 and M2 chip packages. At the heart of Intel's presentation was the quad-tile Meteor Lake CPU, leveraging Foveros packaging for its chiplets and boasting 16 GB of Samsung's LPDDR5X-7500 memory. Although the specific CPU configuration remains undisclosed, the 16 GB of integrated memory delivers a remarkable peak bandwidth of 120 GB/s, outperforming traditional memory subsystems using DDR5-5200 or LPDDR5-6400.

Nevertheless, this approach comes with trade-offs, such as the potential for system-wide failure if a memory chip malfunctions, limited upgradeability in soldered-down configurations, and the need for more advanced cooling solutions to manage CPU and memory heat. While Apple pioneered on-package LPDDR memory integration in client CPUs, Intel has a history of using package-on-package DRAM with its Atom-branded CPUs for tablets and ultrathin laptops. While this approach simplifies manufacturing, enabling slimmer notebook designs, it curtails configuration flexibility. We are yet to see if big laptop makers such as Dell, HP, and Asus, take on this design in the coming months.

Dell Technologies announces financial results for its fiscal 2024 second quarter. Revenue was $22.9 billion, down 13% year-over-year and up 10% sequentially. The company generated operating income of $1.2 billion and non-GAAP operating income of $2 billion, down 8% and up 1% year-over-year, respectively. Diluted earnings per share was $0.63, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $1.74, down 7% and up 4% year-over-year, respectively. Cash flow from operations for the second quarter was $3.2 billion, driven by working capital improvements, sequential growth and profitability. The company has generated $8.1 billion of cash flow from operations throughout the last 12 months.

Dell ended the quarter with remaining performance obligations of $39 billion, recurring revenue of $5.6 billion, up 8% year-over-year, and deferred revenue of $30.3 billion, up 8% year-over-year, primarily due to increases in service and software maintenance agreements. Cash and investments were $9.9 billion, and the company returned $525 million to shareholders in the second quarter through share repurchases and dividends.

You're a serious gamer with serious aspirations. You want that coveted Grandmaster ranking in Overwatch 2, The Global Elite status in Counter-Strike, and the prestige of a Supersonic Legend in Rocket League. Getting there takes strategy, discipline, and talent. But you also need the right gaming hardware to help refine your skills and catapult you into the next tier of competitive play. Success starts with a powerful PC. From there, harnessing the potential of blazing-fast frame rates requires a gaming monitor built to keep up.

The new Alienware 500 Hz Gaming Monitor AW2524HF is the FreeSync Premium-equipped follow-up to the CES Best of Innovation Award-winning G-SYNC certified AW2524H 500 Hz monitor. These two displays represent the pinnacle of performance-oriented technology as the world's fastest IPS gaming monitors. Both the AW2524HF and AW2524H boast a 24.5" IPS panel that refreshes up to 500 times per second, enabling them to achieve intoxicatingly fluid motion. And with a 0.5 ms gray-to-gray response time, latency is cut to an absolute minimum and blurring and ghosting are virtually eliminated.

NVIDIA today announced NVIDIA OVX servers featuring the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, a powerful, universal data center processor designed to accelerate the most compute-intensive, complex applications, including AI training and inference, 3D design and visualization, video processing and industrial digitalization with the NVIDIA Omniverse platform. The new GPU powers accelerated computing workloads for generative AI, which is transforming workflows and services across industries, including text, image and video generation, chatbots, game development, product design and healthcare.

"As generative AI transforms every industry, enterprises are increasingly seeking large-scale compute resources in the data center," said Bob Pette, vice president of professional visualization at NVIDIA. "OVX systems with NVIDIA L40S GPUs accelerate AI, graphics and video processing workloads, and meet the demanding performance requirements of an ever-increasing set of complex and diverse applications."

NVIDIA and global manufacturers today announced powerful new NVIDIA RTX workstations designed for development and content creation in the age of generative AI and digitalization. The systems, including those from BOXX, Dell Technologies, HP and Lenovo, are based on NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation GPUs and incorporate NVIDIA AI Enterprise and NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise software.

Separately, NVIDIA also released three new desktop workstation Ada Generation GPUs - the NVIDIA RTX 5000, RTX 4500 and RTX 4000 - to deliver the latest AI, graphics and real-time rendering technology to professionals worldwide. "Few workloads are as challenging as generative AI and digitalization applications, which require a full-stack approach to computing," said Bob Pette, vice president of professional visualization at NVIDIA. "Professionals can now tackle these on a desktop with the latest NVIDIA-powered RTX workstations, enabling them to build vast, digitalized worlds in the new age of generative AI."

NVIDIA today announced NVIDIA AI Workbench, a unified, easy-to-use toolkit that allows developers to quickly create, test and customize pretrained generative AI models on a PC or workstation - then scale them to virtually any data center, public cloud or NVIDIA DGX Cloud. AI Workbench removes the complexity of getting started with an enterprise AI project. Accessed through a simplified interface running on a local system, it allows developers to customize models from popular repositories like Hugging Face, GitHub and NVIDIA NGC using custom data. The models can then be shared easily across multiple platforms.

"Enterprises around the world are racing to find the right infrastructure and build generative AI models and applications," said Manuvir Das, vice president of enterprise computing at NVIDIA. "NVIDIA AI Workbench provides a simplified path for cross-organizational teams to create the AI-based applications that are increasingly becoming essential in modern business."

Alienware launches the next evolution of its Aurora desktop. As the gaming community has come to expect from Alienware, we design each new generation of desktop with advancements that enrich the gaming experience. With the launch of the redesigned Alienware Aurora R16, we're taking the Aurora R15's model for success and making it even better, ushering in acoustic and thermal improvements and a new space-saving design, all the while achieving the elite gaming performance gamers expect from Alienware.

Here's what we've been able to accomplish with Aurora R16:

• Optimized airflow: on average 20% quieter system, up to 10% lower CPU and 6% lower GPU temperatures.
• Space-saving: Up to a ~40% decrease in total volume than the R15, while internal volume remains unchanged at 25.2L.
• Versatile aesthetic: universal design that fits into more diverse environments.

All these benefits are attributed to a streamlined design language, titled Legend 3, which arrives in desktop form for the first time on Aurora R16.

Dell Technologies introduces new offerings to help customers quickly and securely build generative AI (GenAI) models on-premises to accelerate improved outcomes and drive new levels of intelligence. New Dell Generative AI Solutions, expanding upon our May's Project Helix announcement, span IT infrastructure, PCs and professional services to simplify the adoption of full-stack GenAI with large language models (LLM), meeting organizations wherever they are in their GenAI journey. These solutions help organizations, of all sizes and across industries, securely transform and deliver better outcomes.

"Generative AI represents an inflection point that is driving fundamental change in the pace of innovation while improving the customer experience and enabling new ways to work," Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and co-chief operating officer, Dell Technologies, said on a recent investor call. "Customers, big and small, are using their own data and business context to train, fine-tune and inference on Dell infrastructure solutions to incorporate advanced AI into their core business processes effectively and efficiently."

Dell Technologies announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Moogsoft, an AI-driven provider of intelligent monitoring solutions that support DevOps and ITOps. This transaction will further enhance Dell's AIOps capabilities, as part of its longstanding approach of embedding AI functionality within its product portfolio and as a critical component of its "multicloud by design" strategy. The transaction is expected to close in Q3. Additional details will be available at that time.

About Moogsoft
Moogsoft is the AI-driven observability leader that provides intelligent monitoring solutions for smart DevOps. Moogsoft delivers the most advanced cloud-native, self-service platform for software engineers, developers, and operators to instantly see everything, know what's wrong and fix things faster. Founded in 2012, Moogsoft has more than 140 customers worldwide including American Airlines, Fannie Mae, Fiserv, HCL Technologies, SAP SuccessFactors, and Verizon Media. It has established strategic partnerships with leading managed service providers and outsourcing organizations including AWS, Cisco, HCL Technologies, TCS and Wipro.

NVIDIA RTX is spinning new cycles for designs. Trek Bicycle is using GPUs to bring design concepts to life. The Wisconsin-based company, one of the largest bicycle manufacturers in the world, aims to create bikes with the highest-quality craftsmanship. With its new partner Lidl, an international retailer chain, Trek Bicycle also owns a cycling team, now called Lidl-Trek. The team is competing in the annual Tour de France stage race on Trek Bicycle's flagship lineup, which includes the Emonda, Madone and Speed Concept. Many of the team's accessories and equipment, such as the wheels and road race helmets, were also designed at Trek.

Bicycle design involves complex physics—and a key challenge is balancing aerodynamic efficiency with comfort and ride quality. To address this, the team at Trek is using NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs to run high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, setting new benchmarks for aerodynamics in a bicycle that's also comfortable to ride and handles smoothly. The designers and engineers are further enhancing their workflows using NVIDIA RTX technology in Dell Precision workstations, including the NVIDIA RTX A5500 GPU, as well as a Dell Precision 7920 running dual RTX A6000 GPUs.

What's New: As part of a collaboration with Intel and Dell Technologies, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and the Cambridge Open Zettascale Lab plan to build a "digital twin" of the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) prototype fusion power plant. The UKAEA will utilize the lab's supercomputer based on Intel technologies, including 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, distributed asynchronous object storage (DAOS) and oneAPI tools to streamline the development and delivery of fusion energy to the grid in the 2040s.

"Planning for the commercialization of fusion power requires organizations like UKAEA to utilize extreme amounts of computational resources and artificial intelligence for simulations. These HPC workloads may be performed using a variety of different architectures, which is why open software solutions that optimize performance needs can lend portability to code that isn't available in closed, proprietary systems. Overall, advanced hardware and software can make the journey to commercial fusion power lower risk and accelerated - a key benefit on the path to sustainable energy."—Adam Roe, Intel EMEA HPC technical director

Dell has added a new display to its UltraSharp range and this time around we're looking at a 38-inch ultra-wide display with a resolution of 3840 x 1600 pixels. The display uses an IPS Black panel with a 2000:1 contrast ratio and it covers 100 percent of the sRGB and REC.709 colour gamuts, as well as 98 percent of the DCI-P3 and Display P3 colour gamuts. Sadly it only has a brightness of 300 cd/m² and it's unclear if this is an 8-bit + FRC or a true 10-bit panel, as Dell only mentions support for 1.07 billion colours. It uses a standard WLED backlight, so no fancy miniLED backlight here and as this display is intended for work use, it also only appears to support 60 Hz refresh rate with a response time of 8 ms in normal mode.

Other features include a built-in KVM switch courtesy of a pair of USB-C ports, with the primary supporting USB PD up to 90 W, as well as DP Alt mode, with the second port only supporting USB 3.2 Gen 2 data at up to 10 Gbps. Other inputs include two HDMI 2.1 ports and one DP 1.4, while the outputs consist of five USB 3.2 Gen 2 10 Gbps Type-A ports, two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 10 Gbps ports, a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet jack and a 3.5 mm audio line out jack. One interesting feature is that the built in Ethernet supports network boot, something that isn't a common feature on monitors and it also has the ability to lock the wired port to one of the two connected computers in KVM mode. The stand supports height,swivel and tilt adjustment. The asking price for the U3824DW is US$1,529.99 and it's available from Dell now.

TrendForce reports that in the first quarter of 2023, global shipments of LCD monitors fell 7.4% QoQ to 28.8 million units, marking a YoY decline of 20.5%. Major brands, including Dell, HP, and Lenovo, experienced significant drops in shipment levels, falling by 15.6%, 22.8%, and 19.2% respectively.

On the other hand, several consumer brands saw quarterly growth in their shipments in the first quarter, primarily due to channels replenishing their inventories in March. Among these brands, AOC/Philips stood out, benefiting greatly from demand in the Chinese consumer market. Their shipments not only grew 10.9% QoQ but also increased 3.3% compared to the first quarter of 2022.

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."

TrendForce reveals that alongside the four major CSPs reducing their procurement volumes, OEMs like Dell and HPE have also scaled back their annual shipment volume forecasts at some point between February and April, predicting YoY declines of 15% and 12%, respectively. Furthermore, server demand in China is facing headwinds due to geopolitical and economic challenges. Consequently, TrendForce projects a downward revision in global server shipment volumes for this year—a 2.85% YoY decrease at 13.835 million units.

TrendForce emphasizes that the server market in 1H23 remains pessimistic, with 1Q23 shipments experiencing a 15.9% QoQ decrease due to off-season factors and end-user inventory adjustments. The expected industry boom in 2Q23 failed to materialize, leading to a modest QoQ growth estimate of only 9.23%. Persistent influences on server shipments include OEMs lowering shipment volumes, subdued domestic demand in China, and continuous supply chain inventory adjustments. ESG issues have also led CSPs to prolong server lifecycles and reduce procurement volume. Moreover, OEMs are lengthening supports period for older platforms as businesses seek to control capital expenditures, further contributing to market strain.

Dell first unveiled its UltraSharp U3224KB 6K monitor back in early January at the CES 2023 trade show - this professional-grade 31.5-inch screen boasts Thunderbolt 4 connectivity and sports an impressive IPS Black panel (courtesy of LG Display) capable of displaying a super dense 6144 x 3456 pixel resolution. Today the North American technology company has announced that its U3224KB model is available to purchase at a price of $3,199 (CA $4,289.99).

The UltraSharp's competitive pricing undercuts the nearest competition by $1000 - Apple's Pro Display XDR is marginally better in terms of specifications, but potential buyers will get landed with a $5000 bill for the privilege of owning it. Dell is hoping that a bunch of handy features on its offering - including an in-built KVM, 4K HDR webcam, plenty of type USB-C & A ports, a Thunderbolt 4 port and dual 14 W speakers - will be enough to steal some professional clients from Team Cupertino.

The four major North American cloud service providers (CSPs) have made cuts to their server procurement quantities for this year because of economic headwinds and high inflation. Turning to server OEMs such as Dell and HPE, they are observed to have scaled back the production of server motherboards at their ODM partners. Given these developments, TrendForce now projects that global server shipments will grow by just 1.31% YoY to 14.43 million units for 2023. This latest figure is a downward correction from the earlier estimation. The revisions that server OEMs have made to their outlooks on shipments shows that the demand for end products has become much weaker than expected. They also highlight factors such as buyers of enterprise servers imposing a stricter control of their budgets and server OEMs' inventory corrections.

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).

Dell, the global PC conglomerate, is reportedly cutting the number of its employees. The alleged move is a direct response to the economic downturn caused by declining demand for PCs, which is Dell's primary source of revenue. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, Dell is laying off about 5% of its global workforce, representing 6,650 employees from its offices. As the source notes, Dell is going under re-evaluation of its operations, and the employee headcount reduction is the affected area that will benefit the company an estimated 700 million to one billion US Dollars, as analysts predict.

IDC notes that shipments of Dell PCs have experienced the most significant decline of 37% in Q4 of 2022, compared to the same period in 2021. And given a considerable downturn, Dell's 55% of revenue from PCs is poorly affected. The company is now joining others in big tech in performing layoffs to keep profits afloat.

Dell Technologies expands the industry's top selling server portfolio, with an additional 13 next-generation Dell PowerEdge servers, designed to accelerate performance and reliability for powerful computing across core data centers, large-scale public clouds and edge locations. Next-generation rack, tower and multi-node PowerEdge servers, with 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, include Dell software and engineering advancements, such as a new Smart Flow design, to improve energy and cost efficiency. Expanded Dell APEX capabilities will help organizations take an as-a-Service approach, allowing for more effective IT operations that make the most of compute resources while minimizing risk.

"Customers come to Dell for easily managed yet sophisticated and efficient servers with advanced capabilities to power their business-critical workloads," said Jeff Boudreau, president and general manager, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell Technologies. "Our next-generation Dell PowerEdge servers offer unmatched innovation that raises the bar in power efficiency, performance and reliability while simplifying how customers can implement a Zero Trust approach for greater security throughout their IT environments."