Facing global economic headwinds, the four major North American cloud service providers (CSPs) have scaled back their server procurement quantities for 2023 and could make further downward corrections in the future. Meta is the leader among the four in terms of server demand reduction, followed by Microsoft, Google, and AWS. TrendForce has lowered the YoY growth rate of their total server procurement quantity for this year from the original projection of 6.9% to the latest projection of 4.4%. With CSPs cutting demand, global server shipments are now estimated to grow by just 1.87% YoY for 2023. Regarding the server DRAM market, prices there are estimated to drop by around 20~25% QoQ for 1Q23 as CSPs' downward corrections exacerbate the oversupply situation.

Looking at the four CSPs individually, the YoY decline of Meta's server procurement quantity has been widened to 3.0% and could get larger. The instability of the global economy remains the largest variable for all CSPs. Besides this, Meta has also encountered a notable obstacle in expanding its operation in Europe. Specifically, its data center in Denmark has not met the regional standard for emissions. This issue is expected to hinder its progress in setting up additional data centers across the EU. Moreover, businesses related to e-commerce account for about 98% of Meta's revenue. Therefore, the decline in e-commerce activities amidst the recent easing of the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted Meta's growth momentum. Additionally, Meta's server demand has been affected by the high level of component inventory held by server ODMs.

SUS IoT, the global AIoT solution provider, today announced PE3000G—the industry's first edge AI system to support Mobile PCI Express Module (MXM) GPUs from both NVIDIA and Intel. Specifically, the all-new industrial PC works seamlessly with NVIDIA Ampere/Turing or Intel Arc A-series MXM GPUs. Powered by a 12th Gen Intel Core processor and up to 64 GB of DDR5 4800 MHz memory, and combining a proven power design, guaranteed and fanless thermal performance, and superior physical and mechanical ruggedness, PE3000G brings unprecedented longevity, computing power, flexibility and reliability to AI computing at the edge—making it an ideal option for scenarios where resilience, longevity and both CPU and GPU scalability are paramount.

"PE3000G is ASUS IoT's response to the burgeoning demand for accelerating AI inference and extreme deployment in industrial settings," commented KuoWei Chao, General Manager of the ASUS IoT business unit. "With robust power, thermal and mechanical design, it pushes versatile edge-AI-inference applications to business-critical applications. PE3000G is an ideal fit to accelerate edge AI inference in SWaP-constrained applications, such as machine vision in factory automation, outdoor surveillance system and AI-inference systems for autonomous vehicles."

BIOSTAR sneakily expanded its graphics card lineup with GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" and GTX 16-series "Turing" custom-design graphics cards. The company didn't have these at launch, and for the past couple of years, remained as an AMD-exclusive board partner. The lineup includes a custom-design GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB graphics card with a triple-slot, triple-fan cooling solution; an RTX 3070 with a dual-fan, 2-slot cooling; and cards based on the GTX 1650, GTX 1660, and GTX 1660 Super. The cards come surprisingly late to the party—2 years late for the RTX 30-series, and almost 4 years late for the GTX 16-series. BIOSTAR probably landed itself a good deal with NVIDIA on supply of these GPUs as the company works to clear inventory and pave the way for its 40-series "Ada" GPUs across a wider price-range.

Supermicro, a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is announcing an expanded product line with exciting new ARM-based series of servers as part of the MegaDC family. Using Ampere Altra and Ampere Altra Max processors, the Mt. Hamilton platform leverages a single unified motherboard design, targeting cloud-native applications, such as Cloud Gaming, Video-on-Demand, CDN, IaaS, Database, Object-Storage, dense VDI, and Telco Edge (Distributed Unit and Centralized Unit) solutions. In addition, the new servers address several objectives for cloud-native workloads, specifically delivering high performance per watt while executing scalable workloads and those that require very low latency responses.

"Supermicro continues to bolster our product line by introducing ARM-based servers, using the Ampere Altra and Altra Max CPUs," said Ivan Tay, SVP of Product Management, Supermicro. "Expanding our already broad server product line gives customers even more choices for their specific workloads. We can quickly offer optimized application servers for customers worldwide using our Building Block Solutions approach."

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of TechPowerUp GPU-Z, the popular PC graphics information, monitoring, and diagnostics utility. Version 2.52.0 adds support for AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, RX 7900 XT, RX 6300 OEM; NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, and a few rare "Ampere" based GPUs in circulation these days, including the RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB, RTX 3070 Ti based on GA102 silicon, RTX 3050 based on GA107, and the PCIe AIC version of the A800 80 GB accelerator. Detection is improved for the Xe LP-based iGPU of Intel Core "Raptor Lake" processors. NVIDIA GPUs with ECC memory now have ECC status reported in the Advanced panel. On GPUs where the boost frequency can't be read, the base frequency will be used to calculate fillrates. Clock speed detection for Intel Arc "Alchemist" GPUs has been improved. Vendor detection has been added for several new graphics card brands such as Corsair (gaming notebooks), Maxsun, and Wingtech.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.52.0

NVIDIA manufactured a heap of large "GA102" Ampere silicon to cater to demand from the crypto-mining boom; only to see that demand vanish. With next-gen RTX 40-series awaiting ramp; the company has to digest these GA102 chips somehow, and is apparently letting its partners use them on performance-segment SKUs such as the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti. The RTX 3070 Ti is normally based on the GA104 silicon, which it maxes out, enabling all 6,144 CUDA cores, 48 RT cores, 192 Tensor cores, 192 TMUs, and 96 ROPs, besides the chip's full 256-bit wide GDDR6X memory interface. This SKU is now being carved out on the larger GA102, by enabling 48 out of 84 streaming multiprocessors (just 57% of the CUDA cores enabled); and narrowing the memory bus from its normal 384-bit, down to 256-bit.

The memory size remains at 8 GB, memory type at GDDR6X, and memory speed at 19 Gbps, working out to 608 GB/s of bandwidth. The most interesting aspect of carving the RTX 3070 Ti out of the GA102 has to be board power; with a ZOTAC-branded card listing it at 320 W, higher than the 290 W of GA104-based cards from the company. Sadly, this is a China-only SKU. Every custom-design graphics card, especially from a reputed AIC such as ZOTAC, has to go through qualification with NVIDIA; which means NVIDIA is not only aware of GA102-based RTX 3070 Ti cards, but is behind fusing the SMs to carve out the SKU, and developing the video BIOS and driver support. ZOTAC is kind enough to list the ASIC code on its website, and for this SKU it is "GA102-150-xx."

NVIDIA's add-in board partners today began quietly launching the GeForce RTX 3060 8 GB, a variant of the RTX 3060 with a third of its memory size and memory bus-width sawed off. The RTX 3060, NVIDIA's best-selling desktop graphics SKU from the RTX 30-series "Ampere," originally launched with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 192-bit wide memory bus, which at its reference speed of 15 Gbps (GDDR6-effective), makes 360 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The new variant comes with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory across a narrower 128-bit memory interface, with the same 15 Gbps data-rate, which works out to 240 GB/s memory bandwidth.

Besides memory size, bus-width, and bandwidth; NVIDIA hasn't tinkered with the core-configuration with the RTX 3060 8 GB. It still comes with 3,584 CUDA cores across 28 SM, which work out to 112 Tensor cores, 28 RT cores, 112 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. The GPU's base frequency is set at 1320 MHz, and boost frequency at 1777 MHz—same as the original RTX 3060. Even the typical graphics power is unchanged, at 170 W. The new 8 GB variant doesn't replace the original, but is being positioned a notch below it, possibly to compete against the likes of the Radeon RX 6600 (non-XT), and perhaps even the Arc A750.

Yesterday, NVIDIA launched its GeForce RTX 40-series, based on the "Ada" graphics architecture. We're yet to receive a technical briefing about the architecture itself, and the various hardware components that make up the silicon; but NVIDIA on its website gave us a first look at what's in store with the key number-crunching components of "Ada," namely the Ada CUDA core, 4th generation Tensor core, and 3rd generation RT core. Besides generational IPC and clock speed improvements, the latest CUDA core benefits from SER (shader execution reordering), an SM or GPC-level feature that reorders execution waves/threads to optimally load each CUDA core and improve parallelism.

Despite using specialized hardware such as the RT cores, the ray tracing pipeline still relies on CUDA cores and the CPU for a handful tasks, and here NVIDIA claims that SER contributes to a 3X ray tracing performance uplift (the performance contribution of CUDA cores). With traditional raster graphics, SER contributes a meaty 25% performance uplift. With Ada, NVIDIA is introducing its 4th generation of Tensor core (after Volta, Turing, and Ampere). The Tensor cores deployed on Ada are functionally identical to the ones on the Hopper H100 Tensor Core HPC processor, featuring the new FP8 Transformer Engine, which delivers up to 5X the AI inference performance over the previous generation Ampere Tensor Core (which itself delivered a similar leap by leveraging sparsity).

AAEON, an industry leading developer of edge computing platforms, is happy to announce that it has joined the Azure Certified Device program, ensuring customers get IoT solutions up and running quickly with hardware and software that has been pre-tested and verified to work with Azure IoT. This certification assures that AAEON's new NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin -powered BOXER-8641AI has been tested for functionality and interoperability, ensuring that it has used the Microsoft reference configuration to become one of the market's first Azure-certified NVIDIA Jetson Orin devices.

This announcement illustrates AAEON's continued innovation in the edge AI space, as the BOXER-8641AI has been validated to work with Azure and the latest versions of IoT Edge. Such a certification gives AAEON customers confidence that when choosing the BOXER-8641AI for their application, it is fully IoT Edge compatible.

NVIDIA today expanded the NVIDIA Jetson lineup with the launch of new Jetson Orin Nano system-on-modules that deliver up to 80x the performance over the prior generation, setting a new standard for entry-level edge AI and robotics. For the first time, the NVIDIA Jetson family spans six Orin-based production modules to support a full range of edge AI and robotics applications. This includes the Orin Nano—which delivers up to 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of AI performance in the smallest Jetson form factor—up to the AGX Orin, delivering 275 TOPS for advanced autonomous machines.

Jetson Orin features an NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPU, Arm-based CPUs, next-generation deep learning and vision accelerators, high-speed interfaces, fast memory bandwidth and multimodal sensor support. This performance and versatility empower more customers to commercialize products that once seemed impossible, from engineers deploying edge AI applications to Robotics Operating System (ROS) developers building next-generation intelligent machines.

Early this month, the US Government banned American companies from exporting AI-acceleration GPUs to China and Russia, but these restrictions don't take effect before March 2023. This gives NVIDIA time to take rush-orders from Chinese companies for its AI-accelerators before the sanctions hit. The company has placed "rush orders" for a large quantity of A100 "Ampere" and H100 "Hopper" chips with TSMC, so they could be delivered to firms in China before March 2023, according to a report by Chinese business news publication UDN. The rush-orders for high-margin products such as AI-GPUs, could come as a shot in the arm for NVIDIA, which is facing a sudden loss in gaming GPU revenues, as those chips are no longer in demand from crypto-currency miners.

The demand for data is insatiable, from 5G to the cloud to smart cities. As a society we want more autonomy, information to fuel our decisions and habits, and connection - to people, stories, and experiences.

To address these demands, the cloud infrastructure of tomorrow will need to handle the coming data explosion and the effective processing of evermore complex workloads … all while increasing power efficiency and minimizing carbon footprint. It's why the industry is increasingly looking to the performance, power efficiency, specialized processing and workload acceleration enabled by Arm Neoverse to redefine and transform the world's computing infrastructure.

GIGABYTE Technology, an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today announced new high-density, Arm-based compute servers for cloud-native applications using Ampere Altra processors that support dual socket configurations with up to 256 CPU cores. The GIGABYTE R-series servers already have unique storage options, and the new servers (R182-P91, R282-P91, and R282-P92) extend the depth of support for NVMe (Gen4) SSDs on the Arm platform. For scalable, high-density compute, the last new server, H262-P61, also has no thermal limitations, as it can sustain peak, consistent performance by providing optimal airflow. This multi-node H-series server supports eight CPUs, which translates to as many as 1,024 Arm-based CPU cores in a traditional 2U server. Working off the strengths of the latest Arm architecture for System on Chip (SoC) solutions, Ampere Altra and Altra Max processors are now supported in both single and dual-socket configurations by GIGABYTE.

Prices of high-end NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics cards appear to be in free fall as the Summer demand is beginning to wear off, and the supply chain is under pressure to pave the way for the next-generation RTX 40-series. In the worst days of the crypto-mining craze causing graphics cards shortages, the RTX 3090 Ti could be sold for as high as $3,000. It's now down to $1,099 and in stock. The RTX 3080 Ti, which was credited by reviewers as being almost as good as the RTX 3090, can be had for $739. The RTX 3090 (non-Ti) itself is now firmly under the four-figure mark, going for $959. These brand-new cards face competition from two fronts—cypto-miners dumping used graphics cards at attractive prices that gamers are willing to buy; and from AMD's aggressively-priced RX 6000-series high-end, led by the RX 6950 XT at $900.

NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 4080 "Ada," a successor to the RTX 3080 "Ampere," reportedly comes in two distinct variants based on memory size, memory bus width, and possibly even core-configuration. MEGAsizeGPU reports that they have seen two reference designs for the RTX 4080, one with 12 GB of memory and a 10-layer PCB, and the other with 16 GB of memory and a 12-layer PCB. Increasing numbers of PCB layers enable greater density of wiring around the ASIC. At debut, the flagship product from NVIDIA is expected to be the RTX 4090, with its 24 GB memory size, and 14-layer PCB. Apparently, the 12 GB and 16 GB variants of the RTX 4080 feature vastly different PCB designs.

We've known from past attempts at memory-based variants, such as the GTX 1060 (3 GB vs. 6 GB), or the more recent RTX 3080 (10 GB vs. 12 GB), that NVIDIA turns to other levers to differentiate variants, such as core-configuration (numbers of available CUDA cores), and the same is highly likely with the RTX 4080. The RTX 4080 12 GB, RTX 4080 16 GB, and the RTX 4090, could be NVIDIA's answers to AMD's RDNA3-based successors of the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6950 XT, respectively.

Microsoft is announcing the general availability of the latest Azure Virtual Machines featuring the Ampere Altra Arm-based processor. The new virtual machines will be generally available on September 1, and customers can now launch them in 10 Azure regions and multiple availability zones around the world. In addition, the Arm-based virtual machines can be included in Kubernetes clusters managed using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). This ability has been in preview and will be generally available over the coming weeks in all the regions that offer the new virtual machines.

Earlier this year, we launched the preview of the new general-purpose Dpsv5 and Dplsv5 and memory optimized Epsv5 Azure Virtual Machine series, built on the Ampere Altra processor. These new virtual machines have been engineered to efficiently run scale-out, cloud-native workloads. Since then, hundreds of customers have tested and experienced firsthand the excellent price-performance that the Arm architecture can provide for web and application servers, open-source databases, microservices, Java and.NET applications, gaming, media servers, and more. Starting today, all Azure customers can deploy these new virtual machines using the Azure portal, SDKs, API, PowerShell, and the command-line interface (CLI).

NVIDIA CEO Jen Hsun Huang, in his Q2 Fiscal-2023 Results call confirmed that the company's next-generation GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards could be revealed at GTC Fall 2022, to be held next month in September. NVIDIA's launch of the RTX 40-series "Ada" will be unlike those of the previous few generations, despite retaining a "top-down" launch cycle (of launching high-end SKUs first). CEO Jen Hsun says that the first products will be "layered on top" of the current-generation "Ampere" products, so they don't cannibalize the sales of current-generation products.

"Ampere is the most popular GPU we've ever created. It is in the top 15 most popular gaming GPUs on Steam. And it remains the best GPUs in the world, and it will be very successful for some time. However, we do have exciting new next-generation coming and it's going to be layered on top of that. And so, we've taken—we've done two things. We've reduced sell-in to let channel inventory correct and we've implemented programs with our partners to price position the products in the channel in preparation for our next generation," said CEO Jen Hsun Huang. This could mean that the RTX 40-series could see a ramp-up to the various mainstream market segments, and gain volumes from them, only in 2023. The remainder of 2022 could see a high-end debut of the RTX 40-series, selling alongside attractively priced RTX 30-series cards.Update 09:48 UTC: NVIDIA states that the CEO Keynote for GTC is scheduled for September 20.

Qualcomm is a company well known for designing processors going inside a vast majority of smartphones. However, the San Diego company has been making attempts to break out of its vision to focus on smartphones and establish new markets where it could show its potential for efficient processor design. According to Bloomberg's insights, Qualcomm is planning to re-enter the server market and try again to compete in the now very diverse space. In 2014, Qualcomm announced that the company is developing an Arm ISA-based CPU that will target servers and be an excellent alternative for cloud service providers looking at efficient designs called Centriq. Later on, in November of 2017, the company announced the first CPU Centriq 2400, which had 48 custom Falkor cores, six-channel DDR4 memory, and 60 MB of L3 cache.

What happened later is that the changing management of the company slowly abandoned the project, and the Arm CPU market was a bit of a dead-end for many projects. However, in recent years, many companies began designing Arm processors, and now the market is ready for a player like Qualcomm to re-enter this space. With the acquisition of Nuvia Inc., which developed crazy fast CPU IPs under the leadership of industry veterans, these designs could soon see the light of the day. It is reported that Qualcomm is in talks with Amazon's AWS cloud division, which has agreed to take a look at Qualcomm's offerings.

In a sign that NVIDIA board partners are getting desperate to clear inventory of their high-end GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics cards to make way for the next-generation, EVGA momentarily offered its premium custom-design GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 graphics card at nearly half its original price. The company listed the RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 at $1,149, a $1,000 "instant discount" from its $2,149 original list price, which is nearly $1,500 down from the card's street price before the crypto-mining crash of Q2-2022.

This could have been a one-off discount, as the other RTX 3090 Ti cards from the company's lineup are priced slightly higher, with the faster FTW3 Ultra priced at $1,199; and the FTW3 Black at $1,399. Prices of high-end graphics cards have been in free-fall for the past couple of months, with the Radeon RX 6900 XT frequently spotted under $1,000; and the RX 6950 XT oscillating around the $1,000-mark. The likes of the RTX 3080 Ti can also be had around this price; while the RTX 3080 is now firmly under $1,000, sometimes spotted near its launch price of $699.

Bringing new AI and robotics applications and products to market, or supporting existing ones, can be challenging for developers and enterprises. The NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin 32 GB production module—available now—is here to help. Nearly three dozen technology providers in the NVIDIA Partner Network worldwide are offering commercially available products powered by the new module, which provides up to a 6x performance leap over the previous generation.

With a wide range of offerings from Jetson partners, developers can build and deploy feature-packed Orin-powered systems sporting cameras, sensors, software and connectivity suited for edge AI, robotics, AIoT and embedded applications. Production-ready systems with options for peripherals enable customers to tackle challenges in industries from manufacturing, retail and construction to agriculture, logistics, healthcare, smart cities, last-mile delivery and more.

GIGABYTE Technology, an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today became the first-to-market with a dual-socket motherboard, MP72-HB0, that supports up to 256 Arm cores, making it ideal for cloud native workloads. Also, the launch includes two more servers, G242-P35 and G242-P36, to offer up to 120 TB of NVMe (Gen4) storage capacity paired with Ampere Altra or Ampere Altra Max processors. These GPU-centric servers and motherboard will quickly find a home with hyperscaler and cloud workloads. Altra Max processors have predictable high-performance by having a high core count CPU with one thread per core, 128 threads on a monolithic 128-core chip. Multi-socket support and a wealth of PCIe/CCIX lanes make the platform highly scalable. At the same time, there is industry-leading power efficiency/core, which is highly sought after by our customers.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, the global leading brand of PC, launches GIGABYTE Gaming G5/G7 gaming laptops equipped with 10nm Intel 12th Gen Processor today. A laptop to meet the wide range of needs in multitasking, gaming, and entertainment, with 12th Gen Intel Core i5-12500H laptop CPU, which is comprised of 12-core, 16 threads, and a maximum clock rate of 4.5GHz, to meet the needs for telecommuting and online classes, the purchase of high-performance laptops has been made easier with the adoption of Core i5-12500H, the Core i5 processor is powerful enough to effortlessly handle users' routines. Equipped with the graphics cards of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series, also introduces MUX switch graphics card switching technology, discrete GPU can be directly output to the display with just one click, which can easily improve the game performance and increase the frame rate in fierce game battles. For offering authentic gaming specifications and flexible expandability of hardware. The series can satisfy the user's needs for playing multiple roles in life.

Once again the Eurasian Economic Commission has been helpful by sharing the model names of multiple upcoming graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA, which was dug up by @harukaze5719. This time around it's AFOX, a fairly minor graphics card manufacturer based out of Hong Kong that has submitted products for trademark registration. If these are the final product names or not, it's not clear and there are some "irregularities" in the submission as well, but we'll get to that in a second. Looking at the AMD cards, all the model names are as expected, ranging from the Radeon RX 7500 to the RX 7900XT in even steps of 100, with non XT and XT models for each SKU.

On the NVIDIA side we have the RTX 4050 to the RTX 4090TI, again with even steps, but of 10 this time and TI models of all cards, which seems a bit odd on the lower-end. However, AFOX has also registered trademarks for four RTX 30x0 Super cards, suggesting that NVIDIA might refresh its lineup of Ampere cards before it launches the 4000-series. This is obviously just an indication of things that may happen and should be taken with a fair helping of salt.

NVIDIA is working with its board partners to introduce price-cuts for the higher-end of its GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics cards, in addition to game bundles. This would see the flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti drop in price from $1,999 to $1,499, a 25% price-cut. The RTX 3090 (non-Ti) sees its price cut from $1,499 down to $1,299, or a 13.3% cut. The RTX 3080 Ti slides from $1,199 down to $1,099, an 8.3% cut. The RTX 3080 12 GB will finally be available at or below its MSRP of $799, while remaining inventories of the original RTX 3080 10 GB sticks to $699.

In addition to these price-cuts, NVIDIA is bundling "Ghostwire Tokyo" and "DOOM Eternal" Year One Pass (base game + two DLCs), with these cards as part of a game bundle. NVIDIA is competing with not just a sudden drop in demand stemming from the crypto-currency mining crash; but also crypto miners flooding the market with used cards.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) today announced that it is the first major server provider to deliver a new line of cloud-native compute solutions using processors from Ampere. The new HPE solutions provide service providers and enterprises embracing cloud-native development with an agile, extensible, and trusted compute foundation to drive innovation.

Available in Q3 2022, the new HPE ProLiant RL300 Gen11 server is the first in a series of HPE ProLiant RL Gen11 servers that deliver next-generation compute performance with higher power efficiency using Ampere Altra and Ampere Altra Max cloud-native processors.