We have discovered an issue with our all-in-one watercooler Lumen. Following user reports of an increase in CPU temperatures, an investigation was started to determine the potential cause. Our findings conclude that the soldering material used in the aluminium radiator, as well as impurities introduced during manufacturing, may cause a reaction with the chemical composition of the cooling fluid. Over time this may lead to sediment build-up in the circulating liquid getting caught in the fins of the CPU block, causing an increase in temperatures as a result of the blockage.

Although Lumen units that are not currently causing temperature issues are safe for continued use, the experience of our users is our main priority. We have therefore decided to halt all Lumen sales globally, until we are satisfied that the quality standards we and our users expect are fully met. In order to address the issue, our teams will be working on a new version with an updated radiator and a new liquid formula, produced following revised processes and guidelines for assembly. With our currently estimated timeline, we are hoping to have new units available as replacements for Lumen owners, as well as substitutes for stock at distributors and resellers; in about six weeks. A web form for users to request a replacement can be found on our dedicated website, which also provides ongoing updates, timeline and further information. Ticket holders will also receive updates via e-mail. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

GIGABYTE Technology, (TWSE: 2376), an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today announced supporting products for the new AMD AM5 platform starting with two GIGABYTE motherboards, MC13-LE0 & MC13-LE1, that pair a consumer CPU with IPMI management functionalities via BMC. Additionally, a new desktop workstation, W332-Z00, was released using the same motherboard series platform that supports remote management, but the W332 does so with a Realtek NIC that enables DASH.

The new GIGABYTE products designed to support host systems are deceivingly powerful with a small micro-ATX form factor motherboard and enterprise rich out-of-band management features on top of PCIe Gen 5 and DDR5 technologies. These new client friendly products will be found in office settings under a desk rather than a rack in a data center, as they be managed from anywhere, provided there is a network connection. Furthermore, these new products are purpose built for the mainstream AMD B650E chipset with AMD Zen 4 architecture for AMD Ryzen 7000 Series desktop processors.

DFI, the world's leading brand in embedded motherboards and industrial computers, was invited to participate in "AMD Datacenter Solutions Day" in September, based on the theme of high-performance computing (HPC). As the first in the world to launch the smallest industrial motherboard equipped with AMD products, DFI partnered with its subsidiary, AEWIN, to present their star products and share how ultra-small products can help the trend of software virtualization technologies in the forum. We hope to optimize the development of diverse services in IoT applications.

AMD invited industry giants to the event to discuss the future of high-performance computing and conduct in-depth discussions with their partners related to high-performance computing, cloud computing, and AI. DFI was a speaker in the digital learning AI session during the event. DFI shared their views on software-defined IoT and explained the role of ultra-small products in the application environment.

Taiwan-based leading server manufacturing company Inventec's powerhouse GPU accelerator system, Rhyperior, is everything any modern-day business needs in the digital era, especially those relying heavily on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). A unique and optimal combination of GPUs and CPUs, this 4U GPU accelerator system is based on the NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPU and Intel Xeon 3rd Gen (Whitley platform). Rhyperior also equips an NVIDIA NVSwitch to enhance performance dramatically, and its power can be an effective tool for modern workloads.

In a world where technology is disrupting our lives as we know it, GPU acceleration is critical: essentially speeding up processes that would otherwise take much longer. Acceleration boosts execution for complex computational problems that can be broken down into similar, parallel operations. In other words, an excellent accelerator can be a game changer for industries like gaming and healthcare, increasingly relying on the latest technologies like AI and ML for better, more robust solutions for consumers.

The first reliable benchmark figures of AMD's Ryzen 7000-series CPUs have arrived, courtesy of SiSoftware. The benchmark suite software developer has released benchmark figures for the Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 9 7950X. Keep in mind that these benchmarks are limited to the different tests in SiSoftware Sandra. Also note that the graphs for the Ryzen 5 7600X have typos, as the SiSoftware wrote Ryzen 5 7760X instead of 7600X and the Core i5-12600K is listed as a Core i7 CPU. Starting with the 7600X, the CPU appears to perform similar to, or slightly slower than the Intel Core i5-12600K in the arithmetic tests. On the other hand, it handily crushes the older Ryzen 5 5600X in every test here, by somewhere between 17 and 36 percent depending on the test.

Moving on to the vector SIMD tests, AMD's Zen 4 architecture shows much greater performance improvements, beating the Intel Core i5-12600K in all but one of the tests, where it loses by a fairly small margin. Here it beats the Ryzen 5 5600X by anything from 28 to a massive 86 percent. Where AMD's Zen 4 architecture really kicks things up a notch is in the image processing test, at least compared to the Zen 3 architecture, thanks to its AVX512 capabilities. As such, it's over twice as fast in many of the tests, but it still loses out in half of the tests to Intel's Core i5-12600K. AMD has also improved the inter-thread/core latency in the same module, by a not insignificant amount. Where the Ryzen 5 7600X doesn't fare so well is when it comes to performance vs. power, largely due to the fact that AMD moved the TDP from 65 to 105 W, but it still offers better performance per Watt than Intel's current models.

Update 17:31 UTC: Updated with the Ryzen 7 7700X results.

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.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today premieres Dare to be Ultimate: Building a World-Leading Gaming Phone, the design story video that reveals the genesis of the new ROG Phone 6D series of gaming smartphones. The ROG Phone 6D and ROG Phone 6D Ultimate are powered by the latest flagship MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ 5G chipset. Clocking up to 3.2 GHz CPU speeds, and boasting up to 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512 GB ROM of storage, the Dimensity 9000+ chipset provides flagship 5G experiences, perfect for mobile gamers.

"The pursuit of the ultimate performance and gaming experience has always been central for the ROG Phone. With each iteration, we consistently strive to surpass ourselves, achieving the spirit of For Those Who Dare," said S.Y. Hsu, Co-CEO, ASUS. "We are thrilled that this first collaboration with MediaTek has achieved such stunning performance, and we will continue to strive for continuous performance improvements."

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.

Super Micro Computer, Inc. (SMCI), a global leader in enterprise computing, storage, networking solutions, and green computing technology, is announcing its most advanced GPU server, incorporating eight NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs. Due to its advanced airflow design, the new high-end GPU system will allow increased inlet temperatures, reducing a data center's overall Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) while maintaining the absolute highest performance profile. In addition, Supermicro is expanding its GPU server lineup with this new Universal GPU server, which is already the largest in the industry. Supermicro now offers three distinct Universal GPU systems: the 4U,5U, and new 8U 8GPU server. The Universal GPU platforms support both current and future Intel and AMD CPUs -- up to 400 W, 350 W, and higher.

"Supermicro is leading the industry with an extremely flexible and high-performance GPU server, which features the powerful NVIDIA A100 and H100 GPU," said Charles Liang, president, and CEO, of Supermicro. "This new server will support the next generation of CPUs and GPUs and is designed with maximum cooling capacity using the same chassis. We constantly look for innovative ways to deliver total IT Solutions to our growing customer base."

During Evercore ISI TMT conference, Intel announced that the company would continue to lose market share, with a possible bounce back in the coming years. According to the latest report, Intel's CEO Pat Gelsinger announced that he expects the company to continue to lose its market share to AMD as the competition has "too much momentum" going for it. AMD's Ryzen and EPYC processors continue to deliver power and efficiency performance figures, which drives customers towards the company. On the other hand, Intel expects a competing product, especially in the data center business with Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors, set to arrive in 2023. Pat Gelsinger noted, "Competition just has too much momentum, and we haven't executed well enough. So we expect that bottoming. The business will be growing, but we do expect that there continues to be some share losses. We're not keeping up with the overall TAM growth until we get later into '25 and '26 when we start regaining share, material share gains."

The only down years that are supposed to show a toll of solid competition are 2022 and 2023. As far as creating a bounceback, Intel targets 2025 and 2026. "Now, obviously, in 2024, we think we're competitive. 2025, we think we're back to unquestioned leadership with our transistors and process technology," noted CEO Gelsinger. Additionally, he had a say about the emerging Arm CPUs competing for the same server market share as Intel and AMD do so, stating that "Well, when we deliver the Forest product line, we deliver power performance leadership versus all Arm alternatives, as well. So now you go to a cloud service provider, and you say, 'Well, why would I go through that butt ugly, heavy software lift to an ARM architecture versus continuing on the x86 family?"

Starting next year, AMD will move to a new model number scheme for its mobile processors and it appears that the company has decided to use the first digit to represent the model year, which should alleviate some past confusion. The second digit in the model name will represent where in the product stack the specific chip will sit and here we're potentially getting some new 6 and 8 models, although nothing guarantees that AMD will actually implement these segments into real products. The third digit represents the architecture, so a four equals Zen 4 for example.

The last digit in the model names is a new addition where AMD has sub SKUs that offer some performance advantage of the base SKU of a specific model and this digit will apparently only be represented by a 0 or a 5. Finally AMD has added a new suffix too, where C stands for Chromebook. This translates to 15-28 Watt chips that have been designed specifically for Chromebook usage. The current HX, HS and U suffix lettering will carry over, alongside the lower-case e for 9 W versions the U SKUs. AMD has also segmented it's mobile CPUs according to the chart below, to try and deliver a clearer use case for its various CPU models. The chart is pretty self explanatory, although some of the segmentation will apply to updated models of current designs, whereas others will only apply to new laptop designs. The new model numbering scheme will apply to at least 2025.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announces Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 Mobile Platforms, providing advanced technology solutions to address the mid-tier and mass-volume segment. The Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 provides illuminating capture, hard-hitting game play, and intuitive AI assistance. It extends users' reach with expansive connectivity and sustained, efficient power and performance across the board. The latest 4-series platform, Snapdragon 4 Gen 1, offers impressive performance and AI to make interactions seamless and intuitive. Plus, this platform provides advanced photography features to enable striking capture, as well as improved connectivity so users can share endlessly.

"Both Snapdragon 6 and Snapdragon 4 provide upgrades in their respective series to enable advancements in capture, connectivity, entertainment, and AI. These new mobile platforms help our customers to deliver advanced solutions for consumers," said Deepu John, senior director, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

A Cinebench R23 picture of AMD's recently announce Ryzen 9 7950X CPU having been put through its paces have appeared online via a post on Baidu, which has been taken down since the picture was posted. However, courtesy of @harukaze5719 it lives on, on Twitter and gives us a first glimpse into the Cinebench R23 performance of the upcoming CPU. The CPU is said to have been air cooled, so it's possible that we'll see even higher benchmark numbers with better cooling, so take these numbers with a pinch of sodium chloride, just to be on the safe side. The test system was also using Windows 10, so there's the potential of some extra performance by changing to Windows 11 here as well.

In the single score test, the Ryzen 9 7950X scores 2,205 points, which is in line with Cinebench R23 leaks for Intel's upcoming Core i9-13900K CPU, if a smidgen slower. The multi-core score is obviously not going to compete with Intel's Core i9-13900K due to the overall lower core count, but at 29,649, but it's ahead of the Core i9-12900K by a decent margin. It'll be interesting to see how AMD positions the 7000-series of CPUs, as although it seems like the company has done a good job in improving the overall performance compared to the 5000-series, it's not quite enough to take the performance crown this time around, if these early benchmark leaks from both sides are anything to go by.

Update 10:27 UTC: A new picture hjas appeared where the CPU has been kitted out with better cooling at the multi-core score has jumped from 29,649 to 36,256, which makes it competitive with the Core i9-13900K scores that have leaked in the past.

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).

The next-generation flagship AMD GENOA EPYC CPU has recently appeared on Geekbench 5 in a dual-socket configuration for a total of 192 cores and 384 threads. The processors were installed in an unknown Suma 65GA24 motherboard running at 3.51 GHz and paired with 768 GB of DDR5 memory. This setup achieved a single-core score of 1460 and multi-core result of 96535 which places the processor approximately 17% ahead of an equivalently clocked 128 core EPYC 7763 in single-threaded performance. The Geekbench listing also includes an OPN code of 100-000000997-01 which most likely corresponds to the flagship AMD EPYC 9664 with a max TDP of 400 W according to existing leaks.

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.

Tachyum today announced that it has responded to a U.S. Department of Energy Request for Information soliciting Advanced Computing Ecosystems for DOE national laboratories engaged in scientific and national security research. Tachyum has submitted a proposal to create a 20-exaflop supercomputer based on Tachyum's Prodigy, the world's first universal processor.

The DOE's request calls for computing systems that are five to 10 times faster than those currently available and/or that can perform more complex applications in "data science, artificial intelligence, edge deployments at facilities, and science ecosystem problems, in addition to the traditional modeling and simulation applications."

For those of you that are eagerly awaiting the Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, details of the potential pricing has appeared over at Canadian e-tailer DirectDial. @momomo_us was first to post the details on Twitter, but didn't provide any details of who the e-tailer was, but some sleuthing using the AMD ordering codes soon brought us to DirectDial. The company has listed the all four expected CPU models with pricing and it appears that AMD has decided to stop providing coolers entirely, as none of the four upcoming CPUs appear to be available with a cooler in the box. All the model names ending WOF are retail packaged CPUs and the ones missing WOF at the end of the product number are tray CPUs from what we can tell.

As for the pricing, the Ryzen 5 7600X is listed at CA$435 or about US$340, with the Ryzen 7 7700X coming in at CA$631 or US$494. The Ryzen 9 7900X is CA$798/US$625 and finally the Ryzen 9 7950X is a steep CA$1158/US$907. @momomo_us also found some tray pricing from a different retailer and these CPUs are priced a few bucks cheaper, but we were unable to locate who the retailer is. Note that electronics and computer parts appear to be priced a fair bit higher in Canada than the US on average. As such, these prices should only be taken as an indication of what the retail price in Canada might end up being and not what the actual MSRP will land at, when AMD decides to launch these CPUs. Currently the retail date is expected to be on the 15th of September.

Update 10:49 UTC: The tray CPU retailer is PC-Canada.

Remember that Xe-HPG Scavenger Hunt that Intel hosted last year? If you somehow missed it, Intel was maybe giving away some Arc graphics cards to 300 lucky winners. There were two different tiers of prizes, grand prize and first prize, which later ended up translating to an Arc A770 and an Arc A750 graphics card respectively. Now news via VideoCardz are suggesting that Intel is trying to get out of giving these 300 people their prize, well, at least the promised graphics card, in exchange for an Alder Lake CPU.

Intel has apparently sent out an email to the winners, asking them to accept an Intel Core i7-12700K if they were a grand prize winner or a Core i5-12600K if they were a first prize winner, instead of the promised graphics card. The winners have until Friday the 19th of August to decide if they want a CPU instead of a GPU, although Intel is apparently still allowing them to wait for a GPU, the company just doesn't say how long the wait will be. As the prize has to have a similar retail price, it's also possible to get a ballpark figure of the MSRP of Intel's supposedly upcoming Arc 700-series graphics cards. The Arc A770 should end up at around the $410 mark and the A750 around the $290 mark, as this is the ballpark MSRP for the CPU's that are being offered. It would be interesting to know how many people would be willing to do the trade, but sadly we're unlikely to ever find out.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 series processors have been available since March in Lenovo systems. In the meantime, system integrators and OEMs got their hands on these processors and started selling systems based around them. However, today the DIY channel is equipped with these monstrous CPUs. With up to 64 cores and 128 threads of Zen3 IP, these processors can boost up to 4.5 GHz and have 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes and an eight-channel DDR4 integrated memory controller with 280 Watt TDP across all models. AMD has noted that the non-Pro Threadripper 5000 series is ceasing production in favor of these Pro models and justifying the increased price point by adding more L3 cache and more cores.

The 24C/48T Threadripper Pro 5965WX comes with a 3.8 GHz base and 4.5 GHz boost frequency with 128 MB of L3 cache, and it is priced at 2399 USD. The bigger Threadripper Pro 5975WX is equipped with 32C/64T configuration, has a 3.6 GHz base and 4.5 GHz boost speed, and carries 128 MB of L3 cache while priced at 3299 USD. The top-end Threadripper Pro 5995WX is a monstrous 64C/128T design with a base frequency of 2.7 GHz and a boost of 4.5 GHz. It has 256 MB of L3 cache and costs a staggering 6499 USD. Additionally, all of the new Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 series CPUs require a WRX80-based motherboard chipset, which is an additional expense of its own.

It's pretty clear that we're getting very close to the launch of AMD's AM5 platform and the Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, with spec details and even pricing brackets tipping up online. Wccftech has posted what the publication believes will be the lineup we can expect to launch in just over a month's time, if rumours are to be believed. The base model is said to be the Ryzen 5 7600X, which the site claims will have a base clock of 4.7 GHz and a boost clock of 5.3 GHz. There's no change in processor core or thread count compared to the current Ryzen 5 5600X, but the L2 cache appears to have doubled, for a total of 38 MB of cache. This is followed by the Ryzen 7 7700X, which starts out a tad slower with a base clock of 4.5 GHz, but it has a slightly higher boost clock of 5.4 GHz. Likewise here, the core and thread count remains unchanged, while the L2 cache also gets a bump here for a total of 40 MB cache. Both these models are said to have a 105 W TDP.

The Ryzen 9 7900X is said to have a 4.7 GHz base clock and a 5.6 GHz boost clock, so a 200 MHz jump up from the Ryzen 7 7700X. This CPU has a total of 76 MB of cache. Finally the Ryzen 9 7950X is said to have the same base clock of 4.5 GHz as the Ryzen 7 7700X, but it has the highest boost clock of all the expected models at 5.7 GHz, while having a total of 80 MB cache. These two SKUs are both said to have a 170 W TDP. Price wise, from top to bottom, we might be looking at somewhere around US$700, US$600, US$300 and US$200, so it seems like AMD has adjusted its pricing downwards by around $100 on the low-end, with the Ryzen 7 part fitting the same price bracket as the Ryzen 7 5700X. The Ryzen 9 7900X seems to have had its price adjusted upwards slightly, while the Ryzen 9 7950X seems to be expected to be priced lower than its predecessors. Take these things with the right helping of scepticism for now, as things can still change before the launch.

During this year's Flash Memory Summit, Phison, a company known for SSD controllers and now flash drives, demonstrated a system running AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors based on Zen 4 architecture. What is interesting about the shown specification is that the system was running an engineering sample of an upcoming Zen 4-based CPU with the latest storage technologies at impressive speeds. Using a Phison PS5026-E26 SSD controller, also called E26, the PCIe 5.0 SSD is powered by Micron's latest 232-layer TLC NAND flash. This new NAND technology will also bring greater densities to the market by promising higher endurance, higher read/write speeds, and better efficiency.

With AMD's upcoming AM5 platform, support for PCIe 5.0 SSDs is a welcome addition. And we today have some preliminary tests that show just how fast these SSDs can run. In CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4, it achieved over 10 GB/s in both read and write. We know that the E26 controller is capable of 12 GB/s speeds, so more fine-tuning is needed. Being an early sample, we expect final specifications to be better. The system is powered by an engineering sample of a six-core, twelve-threaded Zen 4 CPU running at unknown clocks, codenamed 100-000000593-20_Y. We can expect to see more of this technology once AMD's AM5 platform lands and Phison-powered SSDs hit the shelves in September.

Intel yesterday confirmed its plans to extend its Meteor Lake architecture towards shores other than general processing. According to Phoronix, Intel posted a new driver that lays the foundations for VPU (Versatile Processing Unit) support under Linux. The idea here is that Intel will integrate this VPU within its 14th Gen Meteor Lake architecture, adding AI inferencing acceleration capabilities to its silicon. A sure-fire way to achieve enormous gains in AI processing, especially in performance/watt. Interestingly, Intel is somewhat following Apple's footsteps here, as the company already includes AI-dedicated processing cores in its desktop/laptop Apple Silicon processors since the M1 days.

Intel's VPU architecture will surely be derived from Movidius' designs, which Intel acquired back in 2016 for a cool $400 million. It's unclear which parts of Movidius/Intel IP will be included in the VPU units to be paired with Meteor Lake: whether a full-blown, SoC (System on Chip)-like VPU design such as the Myriad X VPU, or if Intel will take select bits of the architecture (plus the equivalent of five additional years of research and development), sprinkling them on top of their upcoming architecture. We do know the VPU itself will include a memory management unit, a RISC-based microcontroller, a Neural Compute System (what exactly entails this compute system and its slices is the mysterious part) and network-on-chip capabilities.

Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in enterprise computing, storage, networking, and green computing technology, is announcing future Total IT Solutions for availability with Android Cloud Gaming and Media Processing & Delivery. These new solutions will incorporate the Intel Data Center GPU, codenamed Arctic Sound-M, and will be supported on several Supermicro servers. Supermicro solutions that will contain the Intel Data Center GPUs codenamed Arctic Sound-M, include the 4U 10x GPU server for transcoding and media delivery, the Supermicro BigTwin system with up to eight Intel Data Center GPUs, codenamed Arctic Sound-M in 2U for media processing applications, the Supermicro CloudDC server for edge AI inferencing, and the Supermicro 2U 2-Node server with three Intel Data Center GPUs, codenamed Arctic Sound-M per node, optimized for cloud gaming. Additional systems will be made available later this year.

"Supermicro will extend our media processing solutions by incorporating the Intel Data Center GPU," said Charles Liang, President, and CEO, Supermicro. "The new solutions will increase video stream rates and enable lower latency Android cloud gaming. As a result, Android cloud gaming performance and interactivity will increase dramatically with the Supermicro BigTwin systems, while media delivery and transcoding will show dramatic improvements with the new Intel Data Center GPUs. The solutions will expand our market-leading accelerated computing offerings, including everything from Media Processing & Delivery to Collaboration, and HPC."

As we approach the launch of Intel's upcoming Raptor Lake desktop processors, we are getting more leaks of testing performed by system integrators and 3rd parties that have early access to the engineering sample (ES) chips. A few days ago, we saw an Intel Core i7-13700K CPU run Geekbench 5 benchmark with the older DDR4 memory on ASRock Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E. Today, we are seeing a similar test performed on the same processor, with ASRock Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E/D5 equipped with DDR5 memory. While the previous DDR4 testing used modules running at 3200 MT/s, the DDR5 testing uses 5200 MT/s rated DRAM with unknown timings and setup.

As far as performance goes, the single-core result of the 16-core Intel Core i7-13700K processor was 2090 points with DDR4, while DDR5 showed a slight regression of 2069 points. Of course, this could be attributed to the margin of error. As far as multi-core performance goes, the DDR4 testing managed to produce 16542 points, whereas the DDR5-equipped platform scored 19811 points. This is an immediate 20% performance uplift in multi-core score. It shows that all the cores present in Raptor Lake processors are starving for bandwidth, and a faster memory protocol can bring quite an improvement. As usual, we have to wait to confirm this information with our testing so that we can draw more conclusions.