According to TrendForce's latest survey of the server market, many cloud service providers (CSPs) have begun large-scale investments in the kinds of equipment that support artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. This development is in response to the emergence of new applications such as self-driving cars, artificial intelligence of things (AIoT), and edge computing since 2018. TrendForce estimates that in 2022, AI servers that are equipped with general-purpose GPUs (GPGPUs) accounted for almost 1% of annual global server shipments. Moving into 2023, shipments of AI servers are projected to grow by 8% YoY thanks to ChatBot and similar applications generating demand across AI-related fields. Furthermore, shipments of AI servers are forecasted to increase at a CAGR of 10.8% from 2022 to 2026.

EK, the premium water-cooling gear manufacturer, is launching a new distro plate for the Lian Li O11D XL chassis. The distro has a built-in EK-Quantum Lumen screen, a 7" IPS monitor that can be seen from the front of the case. It is designed to provide advanced water cooling with the latest 3rd-generation SATA-powered D5 pump, removing the need for additional 4-pin Molex cables. The Reflection² series distribution plates are EK-Matrix7 compliant.

The EK-Quantum Reflection² PC-O11D XL D5 PWM D-RGB - Screen Edition is a custom water-cooling reservoir, routing, and pump solution that seamlessly fits into the front of the case showing off a beautiful 7" IPS screen with an aluminum frame. This waterway is also equipped with six innovative push-in ports that come with female G1/4" threaded adapters. The idea is that users can easily assemble the whole radiator + fittings + tubing combo and use these push-in adapters to simply slide it into the distribution plate. The bottom radiator is mounted via a special metal bracket.

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

According to TrendForce's research, global DRAM revenue fell by 32.5% QoQ to US$12, 281 million for 4Q22. The QoQ decline for 4Q22 is larger than the QoQ decline of 28.8% for 3Q22 and comes close to the QoQ decline of 36% for the final quarter of 2008, when the global economy was in the midst of a major financial crisis. The main cause of the steep revenue drop in 4Q22 was the plummeting overall ASP. DRAM suppliers experienced a rapid accumulation of inventory in 3Q22 due to a freeze in buyers' demand. Subsequently, suppliers were much more energetic in price negotiations for 4Q22 contracts as they were struggling for market share. Among the major categories of DRAM products, server DRAM suffered the sharpest price drop in 4Q22. Contract prices of DDR4 and DDR5 server DRAM products registered QoQ drops of 23~28% and 30~35% respectively.

Intel Corporation today announced that its board of directors has reset its dividend policy, reducing the quarterly dividend to $0.125 per share (or $0.50 annually) on the company's common stock. The dividend will be payable on June 1, 2023, to stockholders of record on May 7, 2023. Intel also reaffirmed its first-quarter 2023 business outlook provided at its most recent earnings call, including revenue of between $10.5 billion and $11.5 billion; gross margin of 34.1% on a GAAP basis and 39% on a non-GAAP basis; tax rate of (84%) on a GAAP basis and 13% on a non-GAAP basis; and earnings per share of $(0.80) on a GAAP basis and $(0.15) on a non-GAAP basis.

The decision to decrease the quarterly dividend reflects the board's deliberate approach to capital allocation and is designed to best position the company to create long-term value. The improved financial flexibility will support the critical investments needed to execute Intel's transformation during this period of macroeconomic uncertainty. Since first initiated in 1992, Intel's dividend has delivered more than $80 billion in cash returns to the company's stockholders, and the board is committed to maintaining a competitive dividend.

NVIDIA today announced that company founder and CEO Jensen Huang will deliver the opening keynote at GTC 2023, covering the latest advancements in generative AI, the metaverse, large language models, robotics, cloud computing and more. More than 250,000 people are expected to register for the four-day event, which will include 650+ sessions from researchers, developers and industry leaders in virtually every computing domain. GTC will also feature a fireside chat with Huang and OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, plus talks by DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, Stability AI's Emad Mostaque and many others.

"This is the most extraordinary moment we have witnessed in the history of AI," Huang said. "New AI technologies and rapidly spreading adoption are transforming science and industry, and opening new frontiers for thousands of new companies. This will be our most important GTC yet."

Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers, today announced two additions to the popular DeathAdder line - the Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro Faker Edition and the Razer DeathAdder V3.

Designed in collaboration with world renowned esports player and League of Legends icon Lee "Faker" Sang-Hyeok, the DeathAdder V3 Pro Faker Edition showcases a unique personalized design for the Unkillable Demon King, while equipped with high-performance hardware. The cult-favorite esports mouse has always been Faker's weapon of choice, with the DeathAdder V3 Pro Faker Edition as a testament. Separately, the DeathAdder V3 presents a wired option updated with Razer's latest mice technology, for the best advantage in competitive play.

Since 2022, DRAM suppliers have been adjusting their product mixes so as to assign more wafer input to server DRAM products while scaling back the wafer input for mobile DRAM products. This trend is driven by two reasons. First, the demand outlook is bright for the server DRAM segment. Second, the mobile DRAM segment was in significant oversupply during 2022. Moving into 2023, the projections on the growth of smartphone shipments and the increase in the average DRAM content of smartphones remain quite conservative. Therefore, DRAM suppliers intend to keep expanding the share of server DRAM in their product mixes. According to TrendForce's analysis on the distribution of the DRAM industry's total bit output for 2023, server DRAM is estimated to comprise around 37.6%, whereas mobile DRAM is estimated to comprise around 36.8%. Hence, server DRAM will formally surpass mobile DRAM in terms of the portion of the overall supply within this year.

iBUYPOWER, a leading manufacturer of high-performance custom gaming PCs, today announced the new RDY Ouro Kronii system featuring the special edition Y60 Ouro Kronii PC case.

"It's been an incredible journey collaborating with Kronii and hololive Engish," said King Perez de Tagle, Marketing Executive Producer of HYTE and iBUYPOWER. "It's about time The Warden of Time gets a high-performance gaming PC and the RDY Ouro Kronii limited edition systems are ready to ship. stay tuned for even more!" The RDY Ouro Kronii will boast the latest Intel Core i9 13900K or KF CPU, NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti GPU, Z790 motherboard, and the custom Y60 Ouro Kronii PC case. The RDY Ouro Kronii will provide users with maximum performance in virtually any application with reliable components and iBUYPOWER's expert assembly.

EK, the leading liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is announcing the availability of two high-performance liquid cooling solutions for the AMD Ryzen processor family based on the AMD AM5 socket. These single-socket AM5 water blocks are available in both the standard and the 1U-compatible format designed specifically for server racks.

EK-Pro CPU WB AM5 Ni + Inox
Being a dedicated workstation-grade water block for AMD AM5 processors, the EK-Pro CPU WB AM5 Ni + Inox water block features two standard G1/4" threaded ports on its top. Built with performance, reliability, serviceability, and no compromises in mind, this enterprise-grade cooling solution is intended for desktops, workstations, and taller server racks. The water block's top is CNC-machined from durable black POM Acetal, and the hold-down bracket is made of laser-cut stainless steel.

Atos today announces a contract to build and install a new high-performance computer for the Max Planck Society, a world-leading science and technology research organization. The new system will be based on Atos' latest BullSequana XH3000 platform, which is powered by AMD EPYC CPUs and Instinct accelerators. In its final configuration, the application performance will be three times higher than the current "Cobra" system, which is also based on Atos technologies.

The new supercomputer, with a total order value of over 20 million euros, will be operated by the Max Planck Computing and Data Facility (MPCDF) in Garching near Munich and will provide high-performance computing (HPC) capacity for many institutes of the Max Planck Society. Particularly demanding scientific projects, such as those in astrophysics, life science research, materials research, plasma physics, and AI will benefit from the high-performance capabilities of the new system.

Today, Comcast accelerates the nation's largest and fastest multi-gig deployment and announced that its latest Xfinity 10G network upgrade will be launched to 10 million homes and businesses by the end of this month. These locations now have the foundational network enhancements in place to begin deploying DOCSIS 4.0, setting the stage for the introduction of new symmetrical multi-gigabit Internet options before the end of 2023 that can be delivered across existing networks with less cost.

To date, and ahead of schedule, more than 40 markets across Comcast service areas have implemented network improvements including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and others. The full deployment of these technical capabilities will reach more than 50 million homes and businesses by 2025. In addition to fast speeds, DOCSIS 4.0 technologies will deliver even greater reliability and capacity to power multiple data-intensive applications.

Google announced that its Chrome 110 browser is entering its stable channels yesterday, which means regular users will see an update rollout in the coming days/weeks. What is interesting about this release is that it supports NVIDIA's RTX Super Resolution capability in the browser for the first time. NVIDIA first announced RTX Super Resolution at CES 2023. This feature allows upscaling videos to higher resolutions using the GeForce RTX 30 and 40 graphics cards. For example, you can now upscale a 1080p video to 4K in real-time using the RTX Super Resolution technology and seamlessly watch upscaled content.

Available in the Chrome 110.0.5481.77/.78 version released yesterday, this functionality must be turned on manually in the NVIDIA control panel to work, as it is not enabled by default. In the YouTube video below, NVIDIA demonstrates how the technology works.

Alongside its facilities in Hillsboro, Oregon, Intel was meant to build a state of the art, $700 million R&D centre, but it appears that the company has decided to slam the brakes on that project, as part of its cost saving measures. The "mega lab" as it has also been referred to, will most likely not get built at all, despite the comparably small cost in relation to building a semiconductor fab, but $700 million saved is still going to make Intel look good in front of its shareholders. In total, Intel is said to be looking at cutting US$3 billion in spending for 2023 and cancelling the construction of the R&D facility contributes almost a quarter of that sum.

The "mega lab" was supposed to cover 18,580 square metres of floor space, largely dedicated towards data centre R&D projects. According to Intel, those projects will still go ahead, just at other facilities, according to a statement sent to Oregon Live. Intel is apparently also scrapping plans for a much smaller, US$200 million R&D facility in Israel, while potentially also pushing back its plans for new fabs in Europe. The latter might come down to what kind of subsidies Intel can get from the German government and the EU.

TrendForce's recent analysis of the foundry market reveals that demand continues to slide for all types of mature and advanced nodes. The major IC design houses have cut wafer input for 1Q23 and will likely scale back further for 2Q23. Currently, foundries are expected to maintain a lower-than-ideal level of capacity utilization rate in the first two quarters of this year. Some nodes could experience a steeper demand drop in 2Q23 as there are still no signs of a significant rebound in wafer orders. Looking ahead to the second half of this year, orders will likely pick up for some components that underwent an inventory correction at an earlier time. However, the state of the global economy will remain the largest variable that affect demand, and the recovery of individual foundries' capacity utilization rates will not occur as quickly as expected. Taking these factors into account, TrendForce currently forecasts that global foundry revenue will drop by around 4% YoY for 2023. The projected decline for 2023 is more severe when compared with the one that was recorded for 2019.

Due to the various major events that affected the global economy and politics, the overall demand for consumer electronics made a sharp downward turn in 2022, and global shipments of notebook (laptop) computers began to fall over the quarters. TrendForce's latest analysis finds that global shipments of notebook computers (from ODMs) reached just around 186 million units for 2022, showing a YoY drop of 24.5%. As for 2023, the outlook on the performance of the notebook computer market remains uncertain at this moment. TrendForce expects the YoY decline to moderate to about 7.8%, but shipments are projected to total only 171 million units.

Because market demand was anemic in 4Q22, promotional activities related to the traditional year-end peak season did not generate a lot of sales momentum. Looking at regional markets, notebook brands (PC OEMs) slashed prices in the US and China, but their sales results still did not meet expectations. This development was mainly attributed to factors such as high inflation suppressing consumers' disposable income. Since the sales results for 4Q22 were lackluster, efforts to get rid of the existing stockpile of whole devices might continue through 2Q23. Furthermore, order placements from channels are going to be much more restrained.

United Microelectronics Corporation ("UMC" or "The Company"), a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced its consolidated operating results for the fourth quarter of 2022. Fourth quarter consolidated revenue was NT$67.84 billion, decreasing 10.0% QoQ from NT$75.39 billion in 3Q22. Compared to a year ago, 4Q22 revenue grew 14.8% YoY from NT$59.10 billion in 4Q21. Consolidated gross margin for 4Q22 was 42.9%. Net income attributable to the shareholders of the parent was NT$19.1 billion, with earnings per ordinary share of NT$1.54.

Jason Wang, co-president of UMC, said, "In the fourth quarter, due to a significant slowdown across most of our end markets and inventory correction in the semiconductor industry, our wafer shipments fell 14.8% QoQ while overall fab utilization rate dropped to 90%. Average selling price increased slightly during the quarter as a result of our ongoing product mix optimization efforts, moderating the decline in revenue."

Wizmax by Micronics showed off four new PSU lines at the 2023 International CES. At the top of the stack is the Astro II Gold, a monstrous high-end PSU with 1650 W continuous output, 80 Plus Gold switching efficiency, ATX 3.0 and PCIe Gen 5 standards compliance, and a patented digital-VRM voltage controller by Micronics. Other internal features include DC-to-DC switching a 135 mm fluid-dynamic bearing fan Zero RPM mode up to a certain electrical load, and fully-modular connectivity that includes two 16-pin ATX 12VHPWR connectors with 600 W continuous output each, twelve 6+2 pin PCIe power, two 4+4 pin EPS, and fourteen SATA power connectors.

The Astro II Platinum is technically positioned a notch below the Astro II Gold 1650 W, but is more efficient. The Astro II Platinum comes in 1300 W, 1000 W, and 850 W variants. The 1300 W variant offers two 16-pin 12VHPWR connectors (each 600 W), while the 1000 W and 850 W ones offer one such 16-pin connector. The three get their names from the 80 Plus Platinum switching efficiency on offer, besides a feature-packed AC receptacle with Surge 4K and ESD 15K tolerance, and fluid-dynamic bearing fans with zero RPM up to a certain load.

CES 2023 ended today after an incredible week of product launches, major company announcements and innovation that will help to solve global challenges. CES shattered expected attendance drawing over 115,000 industry professionals - marking the largest audited global tech event since early 2020. With over 3200 exhibitors, including 1000 startups, CES 2023 showcased the next era of innovation from transportation and mobility to digital health, sustainability, Web3, metaverse and beyond.

For the first time, CES had a theme focused on Human Security for All. CES partnered with the United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security and the World Academy of Art and Science on the Human Security for All (HS4A) global campaign to foster food security, access to health care, personal income, environmental protection, personal safety, community security and political freedom. The products unveiled at CES 2023 tackle global issues such as access to clean water, food security, smart cities infrastructure, sustainable energy solutions, personal security and more. CES also featured the latest in accessibility tech, with innovation helping those in the disability community.

TrendForce's latest analysis of the DRAM market finds that the inventory pressure on suppliers remain significant due to the persistently weak demand for consumer electronics. Among the top three DRAM suppliers, only Samsung has seen a slight drop in inventory level thanks to its highly competitive pricing strategy. To prevent DRAM prices as a whole from making another sharp dive, a few suppliers such as Micron have been cutting production. Therefore, the QoQ decline in DRAM prices are projected to shrink to around 13~18% for 1Q23. However, the slump will have yet to reach the bottom at that time. Regarding the QoQ changes in the prices of the major categories of DRAM products for 1Q23, PC DRAM and server DRAM are projected to again register a drop that is near 20%. Conversely, mobile DRAM will experience the smallest price decline because its profit margin is ready the thinnest.

iBUYPOWER (iBP), a leading manufacturer of high-performance custom gaming PCs, today, announced the latest offering in its Trace series of cases, the Trace 7 Mesh and Trace 7 Mesh Pro.

A new generation of iBUYPOWER in-house cases
The latest installation of iBP's Signature Trace series of cases, the new Trace 7 Mesh and Trace 7 Mesh Pro feature a metal mesh down the center of the front panel flanked by two mirrored tempered glass segments. With three included addressable RGB (ARGB) 120 mm fans installed behind the front panel and one fan in the rear for exhaust, the addition of the mesh feature on the Trace 7 Mesh will ensure systems run at ideal temperatures. The Trace 7 Mesh Pro will come with upgraded fans with PWM control and HYTE Nexus software to manage lighting and provide an even more spectacular display.

Altec Lansing adds a new series to their growing line of true wireless (TWS) earphones with the addition of three brand new models announced today at CES 2023. The HydraBuds, HydraBuds Sport, and HydraBuds ANC will make up the new Altec Lansing HydraBud series, a new line of TWS earphones. The all-new HydraBuds are compact, waterproof and affordable earphones that come in a range of colors. Each model in the HydraBud Series comes with Altec Lansing Helix Wings to keep the earbuds securely in your ears. Each model comes with a charging case that provides 3 extra charges.

"True wireless earphones have become a staple today as we see the market moving away from wired headphones and earphones for something more compact and convenient," said Joe Campos, VP Sales and Marketing at Altec Lansing. "We strive to create products that anticipate demand by our consumers. By providing options, they can pick an earphone that best fits not only their needs, but also their price point."

During its CES 2023 keynote, AMD announced its latest Instinct MI300 APU, a first of its kind in the data center world. Combining the CPU, GPU, and memory elements into a single package eliminates latency imposed by long travel distances of data from CPU to memory and from CPU to GPU throughout the PCIe connector. In addition to solving some latency issues, less power is needed to move the data and provide greater efficiency. The Instinct MI300 features 24 Zen4 cores with simultaneous multi-threading enabled, CDNA3 GPU IP, and 128 GB of HBM3 memory on a single package. The memory bus is 8192-bit wide, providing unified memory access for CPU and GPU cores. CLX 3.0 is also supported, making cache-coherent interconnecting a reality.

The Instinct MI300 APU package is an engineering marvel of its own, with advanced chiplet techniques used. AMD managed to do 3D stacking and has nine 5 nm logic chiplets that are 3D stacked on top of four 6 nm chiplets with HBM surrounding it. All of this makes the transistor count go up to 146 billion, representing the sheer complexity of a such design. For performance figures, AMD provided a comparison to Instinct MI250X GPU. In raw AI performance, the MI300 features an 8x improvement over MI250X, while the performance-per-watt is "reduced" to a 5x increase. While we do not know what benchmark applications were used, there is a probability that some standard benchmarks like MLPerf were used. For availability, AMD targets the end of 2023, when the "El Capitan" exascale supercomputer will arrive using these Instinct MI300 APU accelerators. Pricing is unknown and will be unveiled to enterprise customers first around launch.

LG Display, the world's leading innovator of display technologies, announced today that it will unveil its futuristic display products that innovate everyday life at CES 2023. LG Display will be operating two booths at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), one in the North Hall (main booth) and another in the West Hall (automotive display).

The company's main booth will take this opportunity to reveal its industry-leading display technologies that make people's lives more enjoyable under the theme, 'Always On.' On the other hand, under the slogan of 'Advanced Mobility Lifestyle,' LG Display opens its first-ever booth solely dedicated to next-generation automotive display innovations, as the company strives to provide the best mobility experience through solutions ranging from state-of-the-art automotive displays to sound solutions.

It's not just TSMC and the other Taiwanese chip makers that are seeing a dip in demand, the Korean chip makers have seen a slump of 15 percent in the past four months, compared to 2021. This is said to be the biggest drop in chip demand since 2009 according to data from Statistics Korea. There's a combination of factors behind the slump in demand, especially when it comes to memory related products, where inventories already are high, combined with inflation and a low demand.

According to the Financial Times, an analyst at JPMorgan in Korea isn't expecting things to improve until 2024 at the earliest. Just like Micron and Kioxia, SK hynix is looking at cutting spending on new fabs and production lines, although as TPU reported earlier this week, Samsung is going its own way, by continuing to invest in new fabs and production lines. Samsung is expected to have a capex of US$37.5 billion this year back in October, although based on the increase in costs, the capex would have increased in the fourth quarter of the year. On the plus side, it seems like the shortage of semiconductors should ease in 2023 and hopefully return to more normal levels.