Intel's Xeon processors feature a wide range of embedded functionalities that the company has developed over the years. One such is the Virtual RAID on CPU (VROC) that enabled the functionality of an NVMe RAID card on the CPU, simplifying the installation, cost, and maintenance of high-performance storage arrays. Debuting in 2017, it is present in some consumer-facing Core models and Xeon Scalable platforms where it sees the highest usage. However, on January 6, Intel posted a product change notice that notified the users that the VROC function would be discontinued, with the last orders being placed on January 23 and the last shipping with VROC being made on March 31. This caused confusion, especially in the enterprise sector, which utilizes Intel Xeon processors for their workloads and storage arrays.

Tom's Hardware has reached out to Intel for clarification and got the following statement:

Intel SpokespersonThe PCN [Product Change Notice] was prematurely posted while the decision was under evaluation. After discussing with the ecosystem and customers we realize there is significant demand for this product and intend to continue to support it.

Apple today unveiled the new Mac mini, supercharged by M2 and the all-new M2 Pro. With the M2 chip, Mac mini is even more powerful, capable, and affordable with a new starting price of just $599. The new M2 Pro chip delivers pro-level performance to Mac mini for the first time, enabling users to run high-performance workflows that were previously unimaginable in such a compact design. Mac mini with M2 and M2 Pro delivers faster performance, even more unified memory, and advanced connectivity, including support for up to two displays on the M2 model, and up to three displays on the M2 Pro model. Paired with Studio Display and Magic accessories, along with the power and ease of macOS Ventura, Mac mini provides a phenomenal desktop experience that will take users' productivity and creativity to the next level. Customers can order the new Mac mini models today, with availability beginning Tuesday, January 24.

"With incredible capabilities and a wide array of connectivity in its compact design, Mac mini is used in so many places, in so many different ways. Today, we're excited to take it even further with M2 and M2 Pro," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "Bringing even more performance and a lower starting price, Mac mini with M2 is a tremendous value. And for users who need powerful pro performance, Mac mini with M2 Pro is unlike any other desktop in its class."

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."

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today launched new high-performance TVS-h874 QuTS hero NAS models that incorporate 12th Gen Intel Core i9 sixteen-core, i7 twelve-core multi-thread processors with Intel Core Hybrid Technology for optimal computing performance and smooth multiple virtual machine (VM) operation. Integrating the reliable ZFS-based operating system, PCIe Gen 4 expandability, M.2 NVMe SSD caching, and 2.5GbE/10GbE connectivity, the TVS-h874 assists businesses in building high-performance storage environments for hosting multiple VM, application servers, and running business data backup/restore applications.

"The new TVS-h874 models adopt Intel Core Hybrid Technology, combining Performance-cores and Efficient-cores," said Andy Chuang, Product Manager of QNAP, adding "The Performance Hybrid Architecture intelligently allocates CPU cores to different tasks, thus increasing the performance of the new TVS-h874 models by 3.55 times compared with previous models."

TYAN, an industry-leading server platform design manufacturer and a MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation subsidiary, today introduced 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor-based server platforms highlighting built-in accelerators to improve performance across the fastest-growing workloads in AI, analytics, cloud, storage, and HPC.

"Greater availability of new technology like 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors continue to drive the changes in the business landscape", said Danny Hsu, Vice President of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation's Server Infrastructure Business Unit. "The advances in TYAN's new portfolio of server platforms with features such as DDR5, PCIe 5.0 and Compute Express Link 1.1 are bringing high levels of compute power within reach from smaller organizations to data centers."

Inspur Information, a leading IT infrastructure solutions provider, announced that its G7 server platform fully supports 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors. The 16 servers making up the brand-new lineup are industry-leading in terms of performance, openness, intelligent operation & maintenance, and sustainability. Compared with the previous generation of Intel-based products, these servers have 61% higher performance and up to 30% higher computing performance per unit of power consumption. The server platform is designed to be deployed in general-purpose computing, critical computing, AI, and other application scenarios.

Inspur Information's brand-new G7 platform was designed with green technology, open-source solutions, security, and intelligence as priorities. It is an industry-leading example of system design, energy efficiency, and operation & maintenance management. G7 servers support diversified computing, with the most comprehensive product lineup in the industry. With a focus on green energy, this product line supports cold plate and immersion cooling schemes, and has unique cooling designs such as T-shaped radiator and advance heat detection with intelligent regulation, which all work together to reduce energy consumption by up to 30%. The new series also supports cloud operation and maintenance for intelligent fault diagnosis with an accuracy rate up to 95%.

Montage Technology, a leading data processing and interconnect IC design company, announced today that its PCIe 5.0/CXL 2.0 Retimer has successfully achieved mass production. This chip is a key upgrade based on Montage's PCIe 4.0 Retimer, providing a stable and reliable PCIe 5.0 and CXL 2.0 interconnect solution with high bandwidth and low latency for the cloud and high-performance computing market.

Montage's PCIe 5.0/CXL 2.0 Retimer employs advanced signal conditioning technologies to improve signal integrity and increase the effective transmission distance of high-speed signals. Compliant with relevant PCI-SIG and CXL specifications, the chip meets mainstream package requirements, supports transfer rate up to 32 GT/s, and takes the lead in supporting ultra-low transmission latency of less than 5 ns. The chip supports various complex system topologies such as SRIS and Retimer cascading, offering an ideal solution to address the PCIe/CXL signal integrity challenges in next-generation servers, enterprise storage, and AI acceleration systems. The PCIe 5.0/CXL 2.0 Retimer has passed extensive interoperability testing with a variety of compute, storage and networking products, such as CPU, PCIe switches, SSDs, GPUs and NICs, thus laying a solid foundation for the large-scale deployment of cloud computing and data centers.

With the latest crop of AIO liquid coolers getting some smarts such as displays on the pump-block that put out real-time monitoring information, DeepCool figured why not extend this to air coolers? The new Digital series air CPU coolers by DeepCool come with LCD displays that put out real-time monitoring information such as CPU temperature (as measured at the base-plate), and fan speed.

These are essentially upgrades to the company's aluminium fin tower-type CPU coolers with top-plates that have the display and some electronics, instead of what should normally be a die-cast aluminium plate with some optional lighting. Shown at CES were at least four models with a single fin-stack (type-U) design of various sizes, and one dual fin-stack (type-D) design. All of these have a glossy piano-black acrylic top-plate that's framed by an ARGB diffuser. The LCD segment display is somewhere toward the center. The electronics work independently, but you'll need a 4-pin PWM connection for the fan(s), which also power the electronics; and 3-pin ARGB for the lighting.

ASUS today announced the exciting 2023 version of the 16-inch Zenbook Pro 16X OLED (UX7602BZ) creator laptop, featuring a unique Intel processor and a brand-new ASUS Supernova system-on-module (SoM) Design. Developed in partnership with leading technology companies, this new laptop is the most powerful version ever released.

The breakthrough, ultra-compact ASUS Supernova SoM Design enables ultra-powerful performance from the 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13905H processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU with NVIDIA Studio drivers, and support for LPDDR5X DRAM that offers 7500 MHz memory frequency speeds, which is much higher than the previous LPDDR5. The new 2023 Zenbook Pro 16X OLED will noticeably improve video-editing performance and 3D rendering capacity—drastically shortening processing times for creative workflows.

ASUS today announced the all-new TUF Gaming A16 Advantage Edition, an all-AMD gaming laptop with a redesigned chassis and an incredibly immersive 16-inch display. The TUF Gaming A15, A17, F15 and F17 laptops also make a triumphant return, sporting the latest silicon from AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA to power players into the next generation of gaming performance.

TUF A16 Advantage Edition announced
Built for serious gaming with subtle styling, the TUF Gaming A16 Advantage Edition is a sleek gaming laptop built to demolish the competition. Powered completely by AMD, the TUF Gaming A16 features up to an AMD Ryzen 9 Zen 4 processor and AMD Radeon RDNA 3 mobile graphics. "AMD and ASUS have partnered to deliver our latest 'Zen 4' and RDNA 3 technologies into the most innovative form factors," said Jason Banta, CVP and GM OEM PC. "The TUF Gaming A16 Advantage Edition delivers blistering gaming performance and outstanding power efficiency in a sleek portable chassis."

Alienware and Dell today reveal six new gaming laptops including: Alienware m18 and m16, Alienware x16 and x14, and Dell G16 and G15. And these aren't small updates either - the roster debuts updated form factors and materials, best-in-class performance upgrades, design and comfort enhancements, as well as an overhauled Alienware Command Center.

As what defines preeminent gaming experiences constantly evolves, Alienware and Dell continue to set itself apart with meaningful high-impact innovation that meets the changing needs of gamers. Whether you're a competitive or hobby gamer, if freedom without compromise is what you value most, look no further than our intrepid new fleet of high-performance laptops.

LG Electronics (LG) is introducing an expanded LG gram lineup, which offers more diversity than ever thanks to the arrival of the exciting, new gram Ultraslim and gram Style, at CES 2023. LG gram continues to provide both power and portability, packing premium specs into sleek, ultra-lightweight form factors delivering take-anywhere convenience and exceptional user experiences.

LG gram Ultraslim
Headlining the LG gram showcase at CES 2023 is the brand-new LG gram Ultraslim (model 15Z90RT), the thinnest gram model yet. A laptop designed for users seeking supreme portability, the Ultraslim has an ultra-light weight of just 998 grams and a depth (when closed) of only 10.99 millimeters; around the same thickness of a smartphone or notepad. Even though it is the most svelte gram in the 2023 lineup, the 15Z90RT still supplies impressive image quality and processing power, packing a 15.6-inch OLED display with Anti-glare Low Reflection (AGLR) coating and Intel 's 13th Gen Raptor Lake chip with Performance Cores (P-Cores). Further enhancing the excellent portability of the new model is the inclusion of an ultra-compact adapter.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, the world's top leading PC brand, proudly presents gaming laptops powered by 13th Gen Intel HX and H Core Processors and the latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series Laptop GPUs at CES 2023. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series Laptop GPUs power the world's fastest laptops for gamers and creators. Built with the ultra-efficient NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture, the RTX 40 Series GPUs bring a quantum leap in performance with AI-powered DLSS 3 and enable lifelike virtual worlds with full ray tracing. Plus, the Max-Q suite of technologies optimizes system performance, power, battery life, and acoustics for peak efficiency. While peaking performances, the laptops' neat contours also come with varied features to satisfy diversified gaming and entertainment needs.

Among them, the AORUS professional gaming series products, AORUS 17X and AORUS 15X are both equipped with top-notch hardware specifications, possessing powerful computing performances that allow players to pursue extreme speed. While AORUS 17 and AORUS 15 are the best portable choices with superior performance for players seeking entertainment and casual gaming, AORUS 16 is applied with a brand-new laptop design that offers comprehensive entertainment. And for the latest AORUS 17H gaming laptop, the top performance, lightweight, and thin size are all combined. All laptop models are being announced at CES 2023, unveiling the unprecedented masterpieces that all gamers have eagerly anticipated.

Client SSDs constituted a major driver of demand bit growth in the NAND Flash market for the past two years as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were spurring procurement activities related to working and studying from home. TrendForce currently projects that the attach rate of client SSDs among notebook computers will reach 92% in 2022 and around 96% in 2023. However, the demand surge related to the pandemic is subsiding, and the recent headwinds in the global economy have caused a demand freeze in the wider consumer electronics market. Hence, among the major application segments of the NAND Flash market, client SSDs are going to experience the most significant demand slowdown. This, in turn, will constrain demand bit growth as well. TrendForce projects that for the period from 2022 to 2025, the YoY growth rate of NAND Flash demand bits will remain below 30%.

The average NAND Flash content of client SSDs has already surpassed 500 GB this year. Quotes for 512 GB SSDs have fallen sharply and come to a level that is roughly comparable to the quotes that were given for 256 GB SSDs half-a-year ago. In fact, quotes for 512 GB SSDs are also near the level for HDDs with the same capacity. On the other hand, upgrading to 1 TB or higher for notebook SSDs could be challenging for PC OEMs mainly because the licensing fee for the Windows OS has a positive correlation with device specifications. Therefore, an increase in SSD capacity will raise the cost of a whole notebook computer. With PC OEMs being less keen on adopting SSDs that are 1 TB or higher, growth in the average NAND Flash content of client SSDs will also be more limited in the future.

On Jan. 10, Intel will officially welcome to market the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and the Intel Xeon CPU Max Series, as well as the Intel Data Center GPU Max Series for high performance computing (HPC) and AI. Hosted by Sandra Rivera, executive vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and AI Group at Intel, and Lisa Spelman, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel Xeon Products, the event will highlight the value of 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and the Intel Max Series product family, while showcasing customer, partner and ecosystem support.

The event will demonstrate how Intel is addressing critical needs in the marketplace with a focus on a workload-first approach, performance leadership in key areas such as AI, networking and HPC, the benefits of security and sustainability, and how the company is delivering significant outcomes for its customers and the industry.

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."

Ahead of CES, Lenovo unveiled its latest generation of consumer devices loaded with standout features and enhancements designed to help people connect with their passions and achieve their daily goals. With five new performance-driving and portable IdeaPad laptops, a sleek and compact IdeaCentre desktop, and a 9-inch Lenovo tablet, these devices are designed for all the spaces and places in line with the on-the-go lifestyle of today's consumer. Whether working, studying, creating, or just catching up with friends out of town, these new products offer speed, versatility, and convenience to suit their needs wherever they are.

"As consumers continue to seek out the most effective ways of working and studying in a hybrid world where versatility and convenience are paramount, Lenovo's IdeaPad products continue to provide reliability and performance at incredible value," says Jun OuYang, Vice President of the Consumer Segment, Intelligent Devices Group, Lenovo. "This latest generation of products come with a range of striking new features and enhancements that significantly improve the user experience while still maintaining its reputation as an affordable product."

ASUS today announced Mini PC PL64, an industrial mini PC featuring a fanless design and powered by up to a 12th Generation Intel Core i7 (15 W) processor. Each PL64 unit has been subjected to a battery of reliability tests, and the fanless design ensures optimal performance even in ambient temperatures of up to 50°C. This mini PC features dual LAN ports, including 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, dual COM ports, five USB ports, along with triple 4K display support at 60 Hz.

Mini PC PL64 employs a new, almost-silent fanless design that minimizes dust ingress into the chassis to prolong product life. The fanless design and 15-watt CPU support make PL64 ideal for industrial applications where reliability, durability, and low noise are paramount. The cooling system in PL64 efficiently dissipates heat, enabling this mini PC to be deployed in hot environments reaching 50°C.

We don't normally cover TV's at TPU, but this one is so different to anything else out there, that we had to cover it. A US company that goes under the name Displace, will launch the Displace TV at CES 2023 in January and maybe the least strange part of this TV is that it'll have a CPU from AMD and a GPU from NVIDIA, although technically speaking, neither is actually inside the TV itself. The display itself doesn't seem to be particularly remarkable, as it's a 55-inch 4K display based around an unknown OLED panel. However, Displace claims that the sub 20 lbs (9.07 kg) panel features "proprietary active-loop vacuum technology" which allows it to be stuck to any wall without the need of mounting hardware.

If that wasn't crazy enough, the Displace TV is powered by an interchangeable battery pack and the company claims that the TV has a month's worth of battery life, assuming you don't use it more than six hours a day. The company provides four batteries and a charging station with the TV, as well as a base unit, which houses the AMD CPU and NVIDIA GPU. The only other thing the company mentioned about the base station is that it supports Wi-Fi 6E. The Displace TV also supports gesture control, as well as voice control and a remote. For those that find a 55-inch TV a bit on the small side, Displace claims that up to four panels can be connected together to create a 110-inch 16K TV, although it seems like they've counted wrong here, as four times 4K resolution is only 8K, not 16K. It all sounds a bit too good to be true, but we'll have to wait and see if the company really shows up at CES and if it has a product that delivers on all its claims.

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

Global market intelligence firm TrendForce reports that the revenue generation momentum of the global IC design industry slowed down in 3Q22. The main factors behind this development were the Russia-Ukraine military conflict, the recent COVID-19 lockdowns in China, the ongoing inflation, and clients undergoing inventory corrections. The total revenue of the global top 10 IC design houses came to US$37.38 billion for 3Q22, showing a QoQ decline of 5.3%. Qualcomm remained first place in the ranking of the global top 10 IC design houses by revenue for 3Q22. Broadcom returned to second place by overtaking NVIDIA and AMD, who slipped to third and fourth respectively due to weakening demand for PCs and cryptocurrency mining machines.

Regarding US-based IC design houses that were in the top 10 group for 3Q22, Qualcomm recorded a QoQ increase for the sales of smartphone SoCs and 5G modem chips. It also made gains in the automotive electronics market by expanding its collaborations with partners in the automotive industry. As a result, Qualcomm's 3Q22 revenue figures for mobile and automotive offerings reflected QoQ increases of 6.8% and 22.0% respectively. The revenue growth of these two major product categories offset the marginal decline in the revenue for RF front-end chips. Qualcomm's IC design revenue as a whole climbed up by 5.6% QoQ to US$9.90 billion for 3Q22. The company sat firmly at the top of the ranking.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, today announced the ultimate overclocking motherboard Z790 AORUS TACHYON with the latest 13th gen Intel Core processors has smashed 10 world O.C. records including PCMark 7, 3D Mark…etc, as well as 16 GFP (Global First Place) of individual category test by different core numbers, and obtained 9 HFP (Hardware First Place) highest record in specific CPU ID vs. core count. Designed by world-famous overclocker, GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS TACHYON packs overclocker-exclusive features with top-quality components to become the dream motherboard for overclockers, which delivers unparalleled O.C performance with a more friendly and thoughtful interface to set its leading role on Z790 O.C. motherboards.

"It's inspiring that Z790 AORUS TACHYON breaks 10 overclocking world records and more than 20 various overclocking scores, which not only proves GIGABYTE's strong R&D strength but also demonstrates that GIGABYTE's devotion to providing formidable O.C motherboard. We believe this is just the beginning and will continue to create superior overclocking performance and records by Z790 AORUS TACHYON. We look forward to seeing more overclockers around the world using this motherboard to break more world records!" said Jackson Hsu, Director of the GIGABYTE Channel Solutions Product Development Division.

Ventana Micro Systems Inc. today announced its Veyron family of high performance RISC-V processors. The Veyron V1 is the first member of the family, and the highest performance RISC-V processor available today. It will be offered in the form of high performance chiplets and IP. Ventana Founder and CEO Balaji Baktha will make the public announcement during his RISC-V Summit keynote today.

The Veyron V1 is the first RISC-V processor to provide single thread performance that is competitive with the latest incumbent processors for Data Center, Automotive, 5G, AI, and Client applications. The Veyron V1 efficient microarchitecture also enables the highest single socket performance among competing architectures.

Apple's ongoing pursuit of leading performance in custom silicon packages continues with each new generation of Apple Silicon. Today, we have alleged Geekbench performance figures of the upcoming M2 Max chip, designed for the upcoming Mac devices. Featuring the same configuration with two E-cores and eight P-cores, the chip is rumored to utilize TSMC's 3 nm design. However, that is yet to be confirmed by Apple, so we don't have the exact information. In the GB5 single-thread test, the CPU set a single-core performance target of 1899 points, while the multi-core score was 8737. While last year's M1 Max chips can reach 1787 single-core and 12826 multi-core scores, these configurations are benchmarked in a Mac Studio, which has better cooling and allows for higher clocks to be achieved.

Apples to apples (pun intended) comparison with the M1 Max chip inside of a MacBook Pro version with presumably the same cooling capacity, which gets 1497 single-core and 11506 multi-core score, the new M2 Max chip is 19.4% faster in single-core results. Multi-core improvements should follow, and this M2 Max result should be different from the final product. We await more benchmarks to confirm this performance increase and the correct semiconductor manufacturing node.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud division is extensively developing custom Arm-based CPU solutions to suit its enterprise clients and is releasing new iterations of the Graviton series. Today, during the company re:Invent week, we are getting a new CPU custom-tailored to high-performance computing (HPC) workloads called Graviton3E. Given that HPC workloads require higher bandwidth, wider datapaths, and data types span in multiple dimensions, AWS redesigned the Graviton3 processor and enhanced it with new vector processing capabilities with a new name—Graviton3E. This CPU is promised to offer up to 35% higher performance in workloads that depend on heavy vector processing.

With the rising popularity of HPC in the cloud, AWS sees a significant market opportunity and is trying to capture it. Available in the AWS EC2 instance types, this chip will be available with up to 64 vCPU cores and 128 GiB of memory. The supported EC2 tiers that will offer this enhanced chip are C7gn and Hpc7g instances that provide 200 Gbps of dedicated network bandwidth that is optimized for traffic between instances in the same VPC. In addition, Intel-based R7iz instances are available for HPC users in the cloud, now powered by 4th generation Xeon Scalable processors codenamed Sapphire Rapids.