Thanks to the latest reportings from DigiTimes, we have obtained information that Apple has been working on expanding its data centers. According to Taiwan's server upstream supply chain, Apple has increased orders for its data centers, which have been growing starting from the second quarter of 2020. For the full year 2020, the orders are expected to be doubled, and the growth in purchasing is going to continue well into 2021. This purchasing decision from Apple comes after strong demand for its services like iCloud, Apple Music, Apple TV, App Store, etc., all of which have millions of users. Being that Apple is expanding its data centers, that must represent a sign that Apple's user base is continuing to grow strongly.

Phison Electronics , the industry's leader in NAND flash controllers and storage solutions, announces availability of the world's first 15.36 TB QLC customizable Enterprise SSD solution based on Phison's S12DC controller. Phison provides its customers with industry leading SSDs that are customized to their needs by leveraging Phison's firmware, controller, PCBA design, and manufacturing. The S12DC QLC SSD is an ideal storage solution by delivering higher performance, lower power consumption, and greater rack storage density for read intensive storage applications that currently source hard disk drives.

NVIDIA on Wednesday posted its Q2 Fiscal Year 2021 financial results, and the most startling result has been a breakdown of the company's $3.86 billion quarterly revenue among its various businesses. Turns out, that Data Center, and not Gaming, is NVIDIA's largest revenue generator for the quarter. Growing 54 percent over the previous quarter, this division contributed $1.74 billion, as opposed to $1.65 billion from Gaming (up 24 percent QoQ). The Gaming business includes NVIDIA's GeForce line of discrete graphics solutions and the GeForce NOW cloud gaming service.

Much of the growth in revenues for the Data Center business is attributable to the addition of revenues by Mellanox - a network infrastructure company NVIDIA acquired, and adoption of NVIDIA's new A100 Tensor Core GPUs by several new supercomputer projects focused on AI. NVIDIA's scalar processors now power 2/3rds of the supercomputers on the TOP500 list.

GIGABYTE Technology, an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today is announcing a partnership with German based Northern Data AG, one of the world's largest providers of High-Performance Computing (HPC) solutions, to develop distributed computing in Northern Data's data centers. These data centers with GIGABYTE built HPC servers will be located in the Nordics and managed by Northern Data.

GIGABYTE has more than 30 years of engineering expertise and success stories in the development and production of server solutions that cover a myriad of uses from AI servers to GPU dense servers to scientific computing servers and more. The success that GIGABYTE's servers and workstations have had attributes to the quality and resiliency inherent in the development of manufacturing processes, while also listening to customer needs to produce best-fit solutions.

Chenbro has launched the RB13804, a 1U rackmount server barebone designed for mission-critical, storage-focused applications for mixed deployments (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure) in Data Center and HPC Enterprise, that may either require maximum density of compute-to-storage capability or are limited by available rack space. The RB13804 is pre-integrated with an Intel Server Board S2600WFTR that supports up to two 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable 'Cascade Lake' Processors, allowing cost and build flexibility in deployment.

The RB13804 is an easy-to-use barebones server solution that pre-integrates a 2-socket Intel Server Board to ensure a flexible, scalable design with mission-critical reliability. Notably, the RB13804 offers tri-mode storage with interchangeable backplane that enables universal drive bays that can switch between SAS, SATA and NVMe storage types, allowing a single server to upgrade according to the growing needs of the business.

Chenbro has launched the RB23708, a Level 6, 2U rackmount server barebone designed for mission-critical, storage-focused applications in Data Center and HPC Enterprise. The RB23708 is pre-integrated with an Intel Server Board S2600WFTR that supports up to two 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable "Cascade Lake" Processors.

The RB23708 is an easy-to-use barebones server solution that pre-integrates a 2-socket Intel Server Board to ensure a flexible, scalable design with mission-critical reliability. Notably, it offers Apache Pass, IPMI 2.0 & Redfish compliance, and includes Intel RSTe/Intel VROC options, providing an ideal solution for hosting Video, IMS, SaaS and similar storage-focused applications.

Kioxia Corporation has developed and started shipment of engineering samples of next generation Enterprise & Datacenter SSD Form Factor (EDSFF) E3.S which is being standardized by the SNIA SFF TA Technical Work Group. E3.S is a new form factor standard for NVMe SSDs in Cloud and enterprise data centers, especially targeting PCIe 5.0 and beyond. The E3.S will contribute to the design and development of next generation systems, such as cloud, hyper-converged and general-purpose servers and All Flash Array (AFA) systems in cloud and enterprise data centers.

The E3.S specification allows for size, power and capacity options, all with a common connector. Designed for future PCIe generations that offer higher power budgets, EDSFF E3.S delivers improved performance, cooling and flexibility over other form factors. Kioxia's E3.S engineering samples, based on Kioxia's CM6 Series PCIe 4.0 NVMe 1.4 SSD in a 2.5-inch form factor, demonstrated approximately 35% greater performance with the same controller and BiCS FLASH 3D TLC flash memory in the EDSFF E3.S form factor with x4 lanes and 28 W (+40%) of power.

NVIDIA today unveiled the NVIDIA Mellanox UFM Cyber-AI platform, which minimizes downtime in InfiniBand data centers by harnessing AI-powered analytics to detect security threats and operational issues, as well as predict network failures.

This extension of the UFM platform product portfolio — which has managed InfiniBand systems for nearly a decade — applies AI to learn a data center's operational cadence and network workload patterns, drawing on both real-time and historic telemetry and workload data. Against this baseline, it tracks the system's health and network modifications, and detects performance degradations, usage and profile changes.

Xilinx, Inc., the leader in adaptive and intelligent computing, today introduced two real-time computing video appliances for easy-to-scale, ultra-high-density video transcoding applications. Based on the new Xilinx Real-Time (RT) Server reference architecture, these new appliances will enable service providers delivering applications such as eSports and game streaming platforms, social and video conferencing, live distance learning, telemedicine and live broadcast video to optimize video quality and bitrate at the lowest cost per channel for significant TCO savings over both software-based and fixed-architecture approaches.

Designed for edge and on-premise compute-intensive workloads where video channel density, throughput and latency are critical requirements, the new Xilinx Real-Time Video Appliances feature optimized hardware architectures and software to deliver the industry's highest channel density and lowest latency performance. The appliances are available in two pre-configured options integrating Xilinx Alveo data center accelerator cards - the High Channel Density Video Appliance and the Ultra-Low Bitrate Video Appliance.

AMD today announced that 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor powered Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) C5a instances are now generally available in the AWS U.S. East, AWS U.S. West, AWS Europe and AWS Asia Pacific regions.

Powered by a 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor running at frequencies up to 3.3Ghz, the Amazon EC2 C5a instances are the sixth instance family at AWS powered by AMD EPYC processors. By using the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor, the C5a instance delivers leadership x86 price-performance for a broad set of compute-intensive workloads including batch processing, distributed analytics, data transformations, log analytics and web applications.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced plans to expand its NAND flash production capacity in Pyeongtaek, Korea, reinforcing the company's ability to meet demands from emerging technologies. Construction, which began this May, will pave the way for mass production of Samsung's cutting-edge V-NAND memory in the second half of 2021.

"The new investment reaffirms our commitment to sustain undisputed leadership in memory technologies, even in uncertain times," said Cheol Choi, executive vice president of Memory Global Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. "We will continue to serve the market with the most optimized solutions available, while contributing to growth of the overall IT industry and the economy in general."

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today began shipping the 7.68 TB model of the Data Center 500R (DC500R) and 450R (DC450R) SATA SSDs. The DC1000M 7.68 TB U.2 NVMe ships in June. The SSDs provide additional storage and implement strict QoS ensuring predictable IO and low latency for data centers using both NVMe and/or SATA.

The three SSDs join the DC1000B NVMe boot drive, DC500M (for mixed workloads) SATA SSD and Server Premier DRAM to form the most complete range of superior enterprise-class data center storage solutions in the market. "Higher capacity options for data centers enables organizations to increase storage space in their current footprint as Cloud computing continues to grow at unprecedented levels," said Tony Hollingsbee, SSD business manager, Kingston EMEA. "Our evolving line of data center storage solutions serve enterprise customers of all levels from hyperscalers on down and are a key component for organizations to keep the total cost of ownership down."

From introducing game-changing new technologies to being the first to deliver PCIe 4.0 U.3 SSDs, KIOXIA America, Inc. (formerly Toshiba Memory America, Inc.), continues to demonstrate its commitment to delivering cutting-edge flash solutions. This dedication will be on full display at this week's Open Compute Project (OCP) Virtual Summit and Future Technologies Symposium, where KIOXIA will showcase its data center and enterprise solid state drive (SSD) portfolio.

At the Summit, KIOXIA will highlight its CM6 and CD6 Series PCIe 4.0 NVMe enterprise and data center SSDs, KumoScale storage software based on NVM Express over Fabrics (NVMe-oF ) and a new Software-Enabled Flash (SEF) technology that redefines digital storage. KIOXIA has the broadest portfolio of SSDs in the market, including SSDs for client PCs, data center, hyperscale, high-end servers and storage systems.

Today, Microsoft Azure DCsv2-Series featuring a hardware-based trusted execution environment (TEE) built on Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) was released for general availability. Built on Intel's trusted foundation, the Azure DCsv2-Series makes confidential computing broadly available to enterprise customers who want to leverage cloud computing while helping to keep sensitive workloads protected.

"Customers demand the capability to reduce the attack surface and help protect sensitive data in the cloud by encrypting data in use. Our collaboration with Microsoft brings enterprise-ready confidential computing solutions to market and enables customers to take greater advantage of the benefits of cloud and multiparty compute paradigms using Intel SGX technology," said Anil Rao, Intel vice president, Data Center Security and Systems Architecture.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced new Micron 5210 ION enterprise SATA SSD capacity and features, solidifying Micron's leadership in QLC technology volume production. The world's first QLC solid-state drive (SSD), the Micron 5210 is based on the company's advanced QLC NAND technology and quickly replacing legacy hard disk drives (HDDs).

From SQL and NoSQL databases to big data and analytics, object stores and vSAN capacity tiers, customers are now reaping the benefits of NAND flash on performance-sensitive workloads that used to live on HDDs. Rapidly supplanting 10K HDDs, the Micron 5210 delivers 175 times faster random reads, 30 times faster random writes, two times more sequential throughput, and three times more energy efficiency than the largest 10K RPM HDDs - all at a compelling price point.

AMD Financial Analyst Day presents an opportunity for AMD to talk straight with the finance industry about the company's current financial health, and a taste of what's to come. Guidance and product teasers made during this time are usually very accurate due to the nature of the audience. In this live blog, we will post information from the Financial Analyst Day 2020 as it unfolds.20:59 UTC: The event has started as of 1 PM PST. CEO Dr Lisa Su takes stage.

Western Digital is enabling small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to easily transition to NVMe storage and dramatically improve application performance with a new addition to its portfolio of data center NVMe SSDs: the first enterprise-class NVMe SSD in the WD Gold family. Industry analyst firm IDC expects NVMe unit shipments to reach more than 79 percent of the market by 2023. With advancements in multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs, legacy storage technology has become a bottleneck to maximum application performance.

Shipping in early cQ2 2020, the new WD Gold NVMe SSDs will be available in four capacities to channel partners and end customers. The WD Gold NVMe SSD is designed to be the primary storage in servers delivering superior response times, higher throughput and greater scale than existing SATA devices for enterprise applications. WD Gold NVMe SSDs complement recently launched WD Gold HDDs by providing a high-performance storage tier for applications and data sets that requires low latency or high throughput.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced the availability of DC1000M, a new U.2 data center NVMe PCIe SSD. DC1000M is designed to support a wide range of data-intensive enterprise workloads, including Cloud computing, web hosting, high-performance computing (HPC), virtual infrastructures, artificial intelligence and deep learning applications. DC1000M joins the recently released DC1000B NVMe boot drive, the VMware Ready DC500 series SATA SSDs and DC450R to form the most complete range of superior enterprise-class data center storage solutions in the market.

"Mission critical services and Cloud-based applications depend not only on lightning-fast IOPS and bandwidth, but also on the consistency and predictability of the data being serviced," said Keith Schimmenti, enterprise SSD business manager, Kingston. "DC1000M provides the stability and low latency for the evolving data center, while powering the workloads that require one drive write per day (1 DWPD) endurance."

The PCI Express 4.0 specification was designed to double the performance of server and storage systems, pushing speeds up to 16.0 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) or 2 gigabits per second (Gb/s) throughput per lane, and driving new performance levels for cloud and enterprise applications. Today, KIOXIA America, Inc. (formerly Toshiba Memory America, Inc.) announced that its lineup of CM6 and CD6 Series PCIe 4.0 NVM Express (NVMe ) enterprise and data center solid state drives (SSDs) are now shipping to customers.

An established leader in developing PCIe and NVMe SSDs, KIOXIA delivers never-before-seen performance. KIOXIA was the first company to publicly demonstrate PCIe 4.0 SSDs and is now the first to ship these next-generation drives. The CM6 and CD6 Series SSDs are compliant to the latest NVMe specification, and include key features such as in-band NVMe-MI, persistent event log, namespace granularity, and shared stream writes. Additionally, both drives are SFF-TA-1001 conformant (also known as U.3), which allows them to be used in tri-mode enabled backplanes, which can accept SAS, SATA or NVMe SSDs.

Intel Corporation today reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2019 financial results. The company also announced that its board of directors approved a five percent cash dividend increase to $1.32 per share on an annual basis. The board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.33 per share on the company's common stock, which will be payable on March 1 to shareholders of record on February 7.

"In 2019, we gained share in an expanded addressable market that demands more performance to process, move and store data," said Bob Swan, Intel CEO. "One year into our long-term financial plan, we have outperformed our revenue and EPS expectations. Looking ahead, we are investing to win the technology inflections of the future, play a bigger role in the success of our customers and increase shareholder returns."

Kingston Technology today announced the Data Center DC1000B M.2 NVMe SSD, optimized for server boot drive applications, featuring power-loss protection (PLP). Kingston's Data Centre DC1000B is a high-performance M.2 (2280) NVMe PCIe SSD using the latest Gen 3.0 x 4 PCIe interface with 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. DC1000B offers data centres a cost-effective boot drive solution with the reassurance that they are purchasing an SSD designed for server use. The DC1000B is ideally suited as an internal boot drive for use in high-volume rack-mount servers, as well as for use in purpose-built systems that require a high-performance M.2 SSD that includes on-board power loss protection (PLP).

M.2 NVMe SSDs are evolving within the data centre, providing efficiencies in booting servers to preserve valuable front-loading drive bays for data storage. Whitebox and Tier 1 Server OEMs are beginning to equip server motherboards with one, or sometimes two, M.2 sockets for boot purposes. While the M.2 form factor was originally designed as a client SSD form factor, its small physical size and high performance make it attractive for server use. Not all SSD are created equal and using a client SSD in a server application may result in poor, inconsistent performance.

Western Digital announced that it has started shipping the industry's highest-capacity HDD samples to enterprise OEMs and hyperscale customers worldwide. The 20 TB Ultrastar DC HC650 SMR HDDs and 18 TB Ultrastar DC HC550 CMR HDDs, first previewed in June 2019, and announced in September 2019, feature its first-ever commercial implementation of energy-assisted magnetic recording technology on a nine-disk platform, enabling customers to more efficiently provision and scale their data center environments with unmatched total cost of ownership.

With zettabyte-scale data growth, the need for higher-capacity data storage across a broad spectrum of applications and workloads can be reliably met only with high Capacity Enterprise HDDs. The industry-leading capacities of Western Digital's Ultrastar 20 TB SMR and 18 TB CMR HelioSeal HDDs enable customers to deploy up to 22 percent fewer racks and reduce their TCO by up to 11 percent, along with the corresponding reductions in power consumption, cooling costs, and data center infrastructure needs when compared with today's 14 TB CMR HDDs.

Amazon Web Services, a part of Amazon that is in charge of all things cloud, has announced plans to release 32 core CPU based on Arm Neoverse N1 microarchitecture that is designed to handle a diverse workload that today's cloud infrastructure needs. This new CPU should be the second iteration of AWS'es custom CPU based on the Arm architecture. First-generation AWS CPU was a processor called Graviton, which Amazon offered on-demand in the cloud.

The still-unnamed second-gen CPU will utilize a 7 nm manufacturing process if the Neoverce N1 core at its base is to be believed. Additionally, everything from the Neoverse line should translate to this next-gen CPU as well, meaning that there will be features like high frequency and high single-threaded performance, cache coherency, and interconnect fabric designed to connect special-purpose accelerators to the CPU complex. For reference, Arm's design of Neoverce N1 has a TDP of 105 W for the whole SoC and its packs 64 cores running at 3.1 GHz, delivering amazing power efficiency and high core count.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced a breakthrough in nonvolatile memory technology with the introduction of the world's fastest SSD, the Micron X100 SSD. The Micron X100 SSD is the first solution in a family of products from Micron targeting storage- and memory-intensive applications for the data center. These solutions will leverage the strengths of 3D XPoint technology and usher in a new tier in the memory-to-storage hierarchy with higher capacity and persistence than DRAM, along with higher endurance and performance than NAND.

"Micron's innovative X100 product brings the disruptive potential of 3D XPoint technology to the data center, driving breakthrough performance improvements for applications and enabling entirely new use cases," said Micron Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana. "Micron is the only vertically-integrated provider of DRAM, NAND and 3D XPoint solutions in the world, and this product continues the evolution of our portfolio towards higher value solutions that accelerate artificial intelligence capabilities, drive faster data analytics and create new insights for our customers."

Kingston Digital Europe Co LLP, the flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced it is shipping the Data Center 450R (DC450R) Enterprise SSD, a high performance 6 Gbps SATA SSD with 3D TLC NAND, designed for read-centric application workloads. This streamlined server SSD delivers on performance while providing exceptional I/O and latency predictability, a requirement now amongst Data Center Class SSDs. Built to Kingston's strict QoS requirements, the DC450R is designed to ensure performance consistency over a wide range of read intensive and read caching workloads.

Kingston's DC450R is designed for workloads that require 24/7 uptime and reliability, such as Content Delivery Networks (CDN), edge computing applications and a wide array of software-defined storage architectures. DC450R presents a specifically focused feature set that enables data centers to select the most cost effective SSD for their workloads. Businesses require results as they deliver on products, solutions and service level agreements (SLAs) and DC450R provides system builders and Cloud providers with a high performance, economical SSD standard they can count on.