NVIDIA joined Pixar, Adobe, Apple and Autodesk today to found the Alliance for OpenUSD, a major leap toward unlocking the next era of 3D graphics, design and simulation. The group will standardize and extend OpenUSD, the open-source Universal Scene Description framework that's the foundation of interoperable 3D applications and projects ranging from visual effects to industrial digital twins.

Several leading companies in the 3D ecosystem already signed on as the alliance's first general members—Cesium, Epic Games, Foundry, Hexagon, IKEA, SideFX and Unity. Standardizing OpenUSD will accelerate its adoption, creating a foundational technology that will help today's 2D internet evolve into a 3D web. Many companies are already working with NVIDIA to pioneer this future.

AMD has released the latest Adrenalin 23.7.2 WHQL drivers. The release notes include several fixed issues, including those seen in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II when Radeon Anti-Lag is enabled, as well as issues with higher GPU Memory Utilization when using certain record and stream settings like instant replay, corruption seen with some player models while playing Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix+ on certain AMD graphics cards, issue with audio getting out of sync with video when recording from AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition with AVC and HEVC codecs, and display signal issues after switching windows on certain Adaptive-Sync enabled monitors with some AMD graphics cards like the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

The release notes also include a note that factory reset has been temporarily disabled as a precautionary measure due to isolated installation issues during PC upgrades, and AMD Cleanup Utility can be used as a temporary option. AMD also notes that it is working with game developers of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart to resolve stability issues in the game when ray tracing is enabled, so we expect an update soon.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 23.7.2 WHQL

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.

Announced today, Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) is bringing together leading companies for industry-wide cooperation to build a complete Ethernet-based communication stack architecture for high-performance networking. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High-Performance Computing (HPC) workloads are rapidly evolving and require best-in-class functionality, performance, interoperability and total cost of ownership, without sacrificing developer and end-user friendliness. The Ultra Ethernet solution stack will capitalize on Ethernet's ubiquity and flexibility for handling a wide variety of workloads while being scalable and cost-effective.

Ultra Ethernet Consortium is founded by companies with long-standing history and experience in high-performance solutions. Each member is contributing significantly to the broader ecosystem of high-performance in an egalitarian manner. The founding members include AMD, Arista, Broadcom, Cisco, Eviden (an Atos Business), HPE, Intel, Meta and Microsoft, who collectively have decades of networking, AI, cloud and high-performance computing-at-scale deployments.

According to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, AMD started to enable next-generation processors by submitting patches to the Linux kernel. Codenamed Family 1Ah or Family 26 in decimal notation, the set of patches corresponds to the upcoming AMD Zen 5 core, which is the backbone of the upcoming Ryzen 8000 series processors. The patches have a few interesting notes, namely few of them being: added support for the amd64_edac (Error Detection and Correction) module and temperature monitoring; added PCI IDs for these models covering 00h-1Fh and 20h; added required support in k10temp driver.

The AMD EDAC driver also points out that the Zen 5 server CPUs will max out with 12-channel memory. Codenames 0-31 correspond to next-generation EPYC, while 40 to 79 are desktop and laptop SKUS. Interestingly, these patches are just the start, as adding PCI IDs and temperature drivers are basic enablement. With the 2024 launch date nearing, we expect to see more Linux kernel enablement efforts, especially with more complicated parts of the kernel.

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.

Solidigm, a leading global provider of innovative NAND flash memory solutions, has announced the launch of Solidigm Synergy 2.0 software. The Solidigm Synergy software suite improves overall system performance and delivers a better user experience than hardware alone can provide. This free download includes two elements, both optional, but highly recommended: the Solidigm Synergy Driver, which automatically improves the performance of Solidigm SSDs, and the Solidigm Synergy Toolkit, which offers useful SSD health reporting and tools for SSDs from any manufacturer.

Solidigm is the only company today that is investing in a solution with software built on top of the SSD that understands system behavior and adapts based on the user's needs. The latest Solidigm Synergy software improves the PC user experience for all SSD users. It increases performance where it matters most on Solidigm SSDs, and offers a host of useful drive management features for all SSDs, regardless of manufacturer. Solidigm is combining breakthrough SSD products with revolutionary software solutions and plans to introduce further innovations to deliver additional improvements to end-users.

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.

Alphabet Incorporated's Google AI division has today revealed a planned update for its Bard conversational artificial intelligence chatbot. The experimental generative artificial intelligence software application will become capable of assisting people in the writing of computer code - the American multinational technology company hopes that Bard will be of great to help in the area of software development. Paige Bailey, a group product manager at Google Research has introduced the upcoming changes: "Since we launched Bard, our experiment that lets you collaborate with generative AI, coding has been one of the top requests we've received from our users. As a product lead in Google Research - and a passionate engineer who still programs every day - I'm excited that today we're updating Bard to include that capability."

The Bard chatbot was made available, on a trial basis, to users in the USA and UK last month. Google's AI team is reported to be under great pressure to advance the Bard chatbot into a suitably powerful state in order to compete with its closest rival - Microsoft Corporation. The Seattle-based giant has invested heavily into Open AI's industry leading ChatGPT application. Google's latest volley against its rivals shows that Bard's has become very sophisticated - so much so that the app is able to chew through a variety of programming languages. Bailey outlines these features in the company's latest blog: "Starting now, Bard can help with programming and software development tasks, including code generation, debugging and code explanation. We're launching these capabilities in more than 20 programming languages including C++, Go, Java, Javascript, Python and Typescript. And you can easily export Python code to Google Colab - no copy and paste required." Critics of AI-driven large language models have posited that the technology could potentially eliminate humans from the job market - it will be interesting to observe the coder community's reaction to Google marketing of Bard as a helpful tool in software development.

AMD announced it has joined the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Accelerate Program, a co-sell program for AWS Partners - like AMD - who provide integrated solutions on AWS. The program helps AWS Partners drive new business by directly connecting participating ISVs with the AWS Sales organization.

Through the AWS ISV Accelerate Program, AMD will receive focused co-selling support from AWS, including, access to further sales enablement resources, reduced AWS Marketplace listing fees, and incentives for AWS Sales teams. The program will also allow participating ISVs access to millions of active AWS customers globally.

The Razer Stream Controller X is Razer's newest addition to their streaming ecosystem of products, designed to captivate audiences during gameplay or casual socializing. With 15 programmable LCD buttons in a compact form factor, streamers can effortlessly flash stream lights, blast customized sounds, or switch between applications with a simple click, elevating their streams to the next level.

The Stream Controller X is powered by Loupedeck Software, ensuring play-and-play compatibility across all major streaming platforms such as OBS Studio, Twitch, Streamlabs, Adobe Premier Pro, and more. With access to Loupedeck's UI, streamers can effortlessly install popular applications, plugins, and even emotes to further enhance their streaming experience. Streamers can also easily drag and drop preferred applications via the Loupedeck Marketplace, for endless customizability. Popular plugins include Spotify, Phillips Hue, Adobe Photoshop, and even Voicemod which can help streamline creative processes. Additionally, Loupedeck's full suite software also provides users with access to native profiles that are preset for convenience and inspiration. Each comprehensive set of profiles contains premade macros and functions that can be easily interchanged to suit the user's needs, further enhancing the Stream Controller X's customizability.

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).

2K today announced that industry veteran and Firaxis Games Chief Operating Officer, Heather Hazen, has been promoted to Studio Head, ushering in a new era of development at the legendary interactive entertainment studio behind Sid Meier's Civilization, XCOM, and the recently-released and critically-acclaimed Marvel's Midnight Suns.

As Studio Head, Hazen will manage Firaxis Games' development teams and lead its mission to build the best strategy games on the planet. With 22 years of experience in gaming and entertainment, Hazen joined Firaxis Games in 2020 as the studio's Chief Operating Officer. Prior to Firaxis Games, she was an Executive Producer on Fortnite at Epic Games, as well as Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled while at PopCap Games. Hazen's promotion comes as longtime Firaxis Studio Head, Steve Martin, will be leaving the studio after more than 25 years with the organization.

Today, Intel announced the 2023 release of the Intel oneAPI tools - available in the Intel Developer Cloud and rolling out through regular distribution channels. The new oneAPI 2023 tools support the upcoming 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Intel Xeon CPU Max Series and Intel Data Center GPUs, including Flex Series and the new Max Series. The tools deliver performance and productivity enhancements, and also add support for new Codeplay plug-ins that make it easier than ever for developers to write SYCL code for non-Intel GPU architectures. These standards-based tools deliver choice in hardware and ease in developing high-performance applications that run on multiarchitecture systems.

"We're seeing encouraging early application performance results on our development systems using Intel Max Series GPU accelerators - applications built with Intel's oneAPI compilers and libraries. For leadership-class computational science, we value the benefits of code portability from multivendor, multiarchitecture programming standards such as SYCL and Python AI frameworks such as PyTorch, accelerated by Intel libraries. We look forward to the first exascale scientific discoveries from these technologies on the Aurora system next year."
-Timothy Williams, deputy director, Argonne Computational Science Division

Back in September 2021, reports about Intel working on something called SDSi or software defined silicon, started to appear. Now, over a year later, the company has finally launched its SDSi products under the Intel On Demand branding. Back then, we speculated about what features Intel would put behind a paywall and although we were somewhat off track, Intel has put some specific "instructions" behind the paywall on the supported Xeon processors. Specifically, some CPUs will have Quick Assist, Dynamic Load Balancer and Data Streaming Accelerator available as an On Demand feature. Additionally, Intel is also putting its Software Guard Extensions and In-Memory Analytics Accelerator behind the same pay wall.

It appears that these features will be offered as-a-service offering from some of Intel's service partners, but there's also a "one-time activation of select CPU accelerators and security features" according to the Intel On Demand website. It's unclear which Xeon SKUs will get Intel On Demand, but according to The Register, it'll be the upcoming Sapphire Rapids based Xeon processors which should be the first parts affected. Intel has listed partners like HP, Lenovo and SuperMicro, among others, that are involved with the Intel On Demand program. It will still be possible to buy next gen Xeon CPUs that are fully feature enabled like today, but it's unclear if the Intel On Demand Xeon SKUs will offer some kind of cost benefits to companies that don't need the additional features that are behind the paywall.

On Day 2 of Intel Innovation, Intel illustrated how its efforts and investments to foster an open ecosystem catalyze community innovation, from silicon to systems to apps and across all levels of the software stack. Through an expanding array of platforms, tools and solutions, Intel is focused on helping developers become more productive and more capable of realizing their potential for positive social good. The company introduced new tools to support developers in artificial intelligence, security and quantum computing, and announced the first customers of its new Project Amber attestation service.

"We are making good on our software-first strategy by empowering an open ecosystem that will enable us to collectively and continuously innovate," said Intel Chief Technology Officer Greg Lavender. "We are committed members of the developer community and our breadth and depth of hardware and software assets facilitate the scaling of opportunities for all through co-innovation and collaboration."

Intel has today unveiled another addition to its discrete Arc Alchemist graphics card lineup, with a slight preference to the professional consumer market. Intel has prepared three models for creators and entry pro-vis solutions, called Intel Arc Pro graphics cards. All GPUs are AV1 accelerated, have ray tracing support, and are designed to handle AI acceleration inside applications like Adobe Premiere Pro. At the start, we have a small A30M mobile GPU aimed at laptop designs. It has a 3.5 TeraFLOP FP32 capability inside a configurable 35-50 Watt TDP envelope, has eight ray tracing cores, and 4 GB of GDDR6 memory. Its display output connectors depend on OEM's laptop design.

Next, we have the Arc A40 Pro discrete single-slot GPU. Having 3.5 TeraFLOPs of FP32 single-precision performance, it has eight ray tracing cores and 6 GB of GDDR6 memory. The listed maximum TDP for this model is 50 Watts. It has four mini-DP ports for video output, and it can drive two monitors at 8K 60 Hz, one at 5K 240 Hz, two at 5K 120 Hz, or four at 4K 60 Hz refresh rate. Its bigger brother, the Arc A50 Pro, is a dual-slot design with 4.8 TeraFLOPs of single-precision FP32 computing, has eight ray tracing cores, and 6 GB of GDDR6 memory as well. It has the same video output capability as the Arc A40 Pro, with a beefier cooling setup to handle the 75 Watt TDP. All software developed using the OneAPI toolkit can be accelerated using these GPUs. Intel is working with the industry to adapt professional software for Arc Pro graphics.

Today, the AMD GPUOpen announced that AMD developed a new tool for game developers using ray tracing technologies to help organize the model geometries in their scenes. Called Radeon Raytracing Analyzer (RRA) 1.0, it is officially available to download for Linux and Windows and released as a part of the Radeon Developer Tool Suite. With rendering geometries slowly switching from rasterization to ray tracing, developers need a tool that will point out performance issues and various workarounds in the process. With RRA, AMD has enabled all Radeon developers to own a tool that will answer many questions like: how much memory is the acceleration structure using, how complex is the implemented BVH, how many acceleration structures are used, does geometry in the BLAS axis align enough, etc. Developers will find it very appealing for their ray tracing workloads.

AMDRRA is able to work because our Radeon Software driver engineers have been hard at work, adding raytracing support to our Developer Driver technology. This means that once your application is running in developer mode - using the Radeon Developer Panel which ships with RRA - the driver can log all of the acceleration structures in a scene with a single button click. The Radeon Raytracing Analyzer tool can then load and interrogate the data generated by the driver, presenting it in an easy-to-understand way.

AMD today released AMD Software Adrenalin 22.6.1 Legacy. This is a special branch of AMD software designed for older GPUs based on the Graphics CoreNext architecture—Fury series, 300 series, 200 series, and HD 7000/8000 series. The driver only supports Windows 10 64-bit, there's no official support for Windows 11. Legacy branch drivers correct outstanding bugs, security vulnerabilities, and some other software-level updates, but the company doesn't advertise any new game-specific optimizations. This is probably because these GPU generations fall outside the minimum system requirements of the latest games. Still, if you'd like to reminisce with an older GPU you have lying around, or want to build a period-specific project (2010 to 2015); here's your chance. If however, you're looking for the regular Adrenalin 22.6.1 WHQL drivers for the latest GPUs, check out this page.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 22.6.1 Legacy

Cerebras Systems, the pioneer in high performance artificial intelligence (AI) computing, today announced, for the first time ever, the ability to train models with up to 20 billion parameters on a single CS-2 system - a feat not possible on any other single device. By enabling a single CS-2 to train these models, Cerebras reduces the system engineering time necessary to run large natural language processing (NLP) models from months to minutes. It also eliminates one of the most painful aspects of NLP—namely the partitioning of the model across hundreds or thousands of small graphics processing units (GPU).

"In NLP, bigger models are shown to be more accurate. But traditionally, only a very select few companies had the resources and expertise necessary to do the painstaking work of breaking up these large models and spreading them across hundreds or thousands of graphics processing units," said Andrew Feldman, CEO and Co-Founder of Cerebras Systems. "As a result, only very few companies could train large NLP models - it was too expensive, time-consuming and inaccessible for the rest of the industry. Today we are proud to democratize access to GPT-3 1.3B, GPT-J 6B, GPT-3 13B and GPT-NeoX 20B, enabling the entire AI ecosystem to set up large models in minutes and train them on a single CS-2."

Intel's high-end desktop (HEDT), usually reserved for workstation and enterprise applications, is due for an update, and the company is readying an entire family of updated products. Today, we found a leak of what appears to be an Intel Sapphire Rapids design made for desktops. Called Xeon W5-3433, the CPU appears in the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark database. It carries a configuration of 16 cores and 32 threads and is equipped with 32 MB of L2 cache and 45 MB of L3 cache. Having 2 MB of L2 cache per core suggests that the design is not an Alder Lake variation. This specific SKU is clocked at 1.99 GHz, meaning an early engineering sample.

The Sapphire Rapids HEDT platform is codenamed FishHawk Falls. Intel is supposed to offer Alder Lake-X processors with higher core counts and the FishHawk Falls. Both will be running on the same W790 chipset; however, the Sapphire Rapids implementation will carry more cores in a Xeon package designed for professionals. There was an Ice Lake-X Xeon processor called Xeon W-3335 with 16 cores and 32 threads, meaning that the leaked Xeon W5-3433 is its direct successor.

AMD and the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One (F1) Team today showcased how AMD EPYC processors improved aerodynamics testing capacity, contributing to the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team winning its eighth Constructors' Championship in the 2021 racing season. By using AMD EPYC processors, the team was able to achieve a 20 percent performance improvement for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) workloads that were used to model and test aerodynamic flow of their F1 car.

"We are proud to partner with the reigning Constructors' Champions, the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, operating at the cutting edge of racing and technology," said, Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Server Business Unit, AMD. "For F1 teams, having the most effective computational analysis of aerodynamics can mean the difference between winning and losing a race. With AMD EPYC processors, the Mercedes-AMG F1 team can iterate on vehicle design faster and more efficiently than their previous system."

According to the latest investigation made by a German publication, Igor's Lab, AMD's Adrenalin GPU software could experience unexpected behavior when Ryzen Master software is integrated into it. Supposedly, the combination of the two would allow AMD Adrenalin GPU software to misbehave and accidentally change CPU PBO and Precision Boost settings, disregarding the user's permissions. What Igor's Lab investigated was a case of Adrenalin software automatically enabling PBO or "CPU OC" setting when applying GPU profiles. This also happens when the GPU is in the Default mode, which is set automatically by the software.

Alterations can happen without user knowledge. If a user applies custom voltage and frequency settings in BIOS, Adrenalin software can and sometimes will override those settings to set arbitrary ones, potentially impacting the CPU's stability. The software can also alter CPU power limits as it has the means to do so. This problem only occurs when AMD CPU is combined with AMD GPU and AMD Ryzen Master SDK is installed. If another configuration is present, there is no change to the system. There are ways to bypass this edge case, and that is going back to BIOS to re-apply CPU settings manually or disable PBO. A Reddit user found that creating new GPU tuning profiles without loading older profiles will also bypass Adrenalin from adjusting your CPU settings. AMD hasn't made comments about the software, and so far remains a mystery why this is happening.

Samsung and Western Digital today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that implies that the two companies will join their efforts to create next-generation data placement, processing, and fabrics (D2PF) storage technologies. The MOU states that the two companies will collaborate on creating Zoned Storage devices, including ZNS (Zoned Namespaces) SSDs and SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) HDDs. The ZNS SSD initiative is a challenge of creating entirely new SSDs that work on the ZNS principle instead of traditional block-based drives. Opposite to data in traditional SSDs written in blocks, ZNS SSDs will place data into zones and have software understand where each bit of information is written without excessive read/write action. Another benefit of ZNS is that managing data allows less garbage collection, thus higher efficiency.

Software adoption for ZNS makes it hard, and Samsung's conjoined efforts with Western Digital aim to simplify it. Western Digital notes that "In addition, this collaboration is expected to serve as a starting point to expand zone-based (e.g. ZNS, SMR) device interfaces, as well as future-generation, high-capacity storage devices with enhanced data placement and processing technologies. At a later stage, these initiatives will be expanded to include other emerging D2PF technologies such as computational storage and storage fabrics including NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF)." So, with further development of ZNS, Samsung and Western Digital will collab on more advanced storage options as well.

AMD with its Version 22.3.1 driver release, announced the re-branding of AMD Radeon Software to simply AMD Software. Over the years, Radeon Software grew into something beyond simply GPU drivers and software strictly related to the GPU and display—it is now an all-encompassing suite of software relevant to gamers and creators, helping them organize and optimize their software, share their gameplay among multiple devices locally or over the Internet; and record or stream their experiences, all using software AMD provides to go with its hardware. Going forward, the nomenclature of AMD Software will be practically identical to that of AMD Radeon Software, just without the "Radeon" part. Today (17th March), the company is releasing AMD Software Adrenalin 22.3.1 to introduce several new features and updates. Although not part of the 22.3.1 release, we predict that AMD Software in the future could integrate components beyond graphics and gaming; including platform drivers, overclocking tools, processor-related components, and more.