NVIDIA today announced the NVIDIA BlueField -3 DPU, its next-generation data processing unit, to deliver the most powerful software-defined networking, storage and cybersecurity acceleration capabilities available for data centers.

The first DPU built for AI and accelerated computing, BlueField-3 lets every enterprise deliver applications at any scale with industry-leading performance and data center security. It is optimized for multi-tenant, cloud-native environments, offering software-defined, hardware-accelerated networking, storage, security and management services at data-center scale.

Dell's gaming subsidiary, Alienware, has launched a product designed to reintroduce products of a company that was abandoned in the laptop sector a long time ago. Alienware's last AMD-based gaming laptop made an appearance in 2007, and for 14 years there wasn't an Alienware laptop with an AMD processor inside it. For all those years, the heart of Alienware laptops was promised to Intel, however, that is no longer the case. Today, Alienware has introduced a Ryzen edition of the m15 R5 gaming laptop, powered by... you guessed it, AMD Ryzen 5000 series of mobile processors.

The new Alienware m15 R5 Ryzen Edition laptop is set to bring the balance to the force. Featuring AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 5900HX overclockable processor, the CPU is paired with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card. All of that is crammed inside a 15-inch body that offers QHD 240Hz or FHD 360Hz panels for the best possible gaming experience. For the cherry on top, the laptop offers Cherry MX keyboard switches with per-key RGB lighting. The new Ryzen edition Alienware laptop will be available for purchase in the U.S. with select configurations on April 20 starting at $1793.98. You can check out some pictures of the laptop below.More pictures follow.

NVIDIA today announced NVIDIA AI Enterprise, a comprehensive software suite of enterprise-grade AI tools and frameworks optimized, certified and supported by NVIDIA, exclusively with VMware vSphere 7 Update 2, separately announced today.

Through a first-of-its-kind industry collaboration to develop an AI-Ready Enterprise platform, NVIDIA teamed with VMware to virtualize AI workloads on VMware vSphere with NVIDIA AI Enterprise. The offering gives enterprises the software required to develop a broad range of AI solutions, such as advanced diagnostics in healthcare, smart factories for manufacturing, and fraud detection in financial services.

AMD has just announced its Navi 22 RDNA 2 devices, spanning the middle-end gaming sector. The Radeon RX 6700 XT, which is the latest addition to the 6000 series of Radeon graphics cards, is carrying the Navi 22 chip inside it. However, AMD GPUs need to satisfy another sector in addition to the desktop market and that is the laptop/mobile market. With the past 5000 series of laptop GPUs, AMD has made a bit of a disappointing launch. Given the availability of the first-generation RDNA GPUs in mobile devices, many gamers were unable to find 5000 series Radeon GPUs in laptops, as it was rarely a choice. MSI and Dell have carried a few models with the Radeon RX 5500M and RX 5600M, and the highest-end Radeon RX 5700M availability was limited to Dell Alienware Area-51m R2 laptop.

During the announcement of Radeon RX 6700 XT, Scott Herkleman (CVP & GM AMD Radeon) has announced that AMD is preparing the launch of the next-generation RDNA 2 based RX 6000 series of graphics cards for mobile/laptop devices. While there should be a range of models based on Navi 22, Navi 23, and Navi 24, the availability is unknown for now. The only information we have so far is that it is "coming soon". The exact configurations of these chips remain a mystery until the launch happens, so we have to wait to find out more.

AMD appears to be taking baby steps toward expanding its Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" desktop processor lineup. Dell Canada has started listing a model of the processor series not yet available in the DIY retail channel, the Ryzen 7 5800 (non-X). This isn't a typo, as the option is listed next to the 5800X. The Ryzen 7 5800 is described as being an 8-core part, much like the 5800X, but has a slightly lower max boost frequency of 4.60 GHz, as opposed to 4.70 GHz of the 5800X. It could have a lower nominal (base) frequency compared to the 5800X, and possibly even a lower TDP. The last time AMD released an OEM-exclusive non-X SKU was the Ryzen 9 3900 12-core processor.

AMD's current retail-channel (PIB) lineup of Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors starts at $299 for the 6-core Ryzen 5 5600X, with the company still selling Ryzen 3000-series SKUs such as the 8-core Ryzen 7 3700X under this price. We expect the company to flesh out the 5000-series with SKUs such as the "Ryzen 5 5600 (non-X)," later this year, in response to Intel's 11th Gen Core i5 series based on the "Rocket Lake-S" silicon. Given the fate of the Ryzen 9 3900, we don't expect a broad retail launch of the Ryzen 7 5800.

AMD is readying its upcoming EPYC processors based on the refined Zen 3 core. Codenamed "Milan", the processor generation is supposed to bring the same number of PCIe lanes and quite possibly similar memory support. The pricing, along with the specifications, has been leaked and now we have information on every model ranging from eight cores to the whopping 64 cores. Thanks to @momomo_us on Twitter, we got ahold of Canadian pricing leaked on the Dell Canada website. Starting from the cheapest design listed here (many are missing here), you would be looking at the EPYC 7543 processor with 32 cores running at 2.8 GHz speed, 256 MB of L3 cache, and a TDP of 225 Watts. Such a processor will set you back as much as 2579.69 CAD, which is cheaper compared to the previous generation EPYC 7542 that costs 3214.70 CAD.

Whatever this represents more aggressive pricing to position itself better against the competition, we do not know. The same strategy is applied with the 64 core AMD EPYC 7763 processor (2.45 GHz speed, 256 MB cache, 280 W TDP) as the new Zen 3 based design is priced at 8069.69 CAD, which is cheaper than the 8180.10 CAD price tag of AMD EPYC 7762 CPU.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) has revealed PC shipping growth numbers for 2020 - counting desktops, notebooks (including Chromebooks) and workstations (but excluding laptops and servers), and the results are clear. In a currently-pandemic world, and with the urge and necessity for teleworking efforts so as to reduce personal exposure to risk environments, we've seen an unprecedented demand for technological components. Whether in shortages for the latest "comfort" technologies such as dedicated graphics cards, latest-gen consoles, or even webcams, it's been clear that citizens of the world have been increasingly investing their money in technological devices. This need - either for work, for bridging social distances through the Internet, or for entertainment - has led the pre-built PC ecosystem shipments to increase as much as 13% in 2020 - and a global shipment number set at 302.6 million units.

This year-over-year (YoY) increase is bolstered, mainly, by rises in sales throughout Q4 of 2020, where global PC shipments achieved an outstanding 26% increase from Q4 2019 - in the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, 91.6 million units were shipped. In that particular quarter, Lenovo led the top three vendors with a 25.2% share of the sales, followed by HP (20.9%) and Dell (17.2%). Apple appears in fourth place with a mere 8% market share, but shows the strongest growth among the top 5 sellers, at 49.2% YoY - and that's with Apple's comparatively small product portfolio when put against any of the other top three vendors.

Dell Technologies unveiled new products and software that reimagine work so anyone can perform at their best. With a new portfolio of intelligent, collaborative and sustainable devices, Dell is transforming work experiences to give people greater flexibility to work from anywhere. "People's expectations of their technology continue to evolve. It's why we push beyond barriers to create devices that offer better experiences and are more integrated into our lives," said Ed Ward, senior vice president, Client Product Group, Dell Technologies. "Our new intelligent PCs make it possible for us to work smarter and collaborate easier, so we can give our best selves in all that we do. Secure, sustainable and smart: that's the way forward for PCs."

"The PC industry just had its biggest year in six years, closing in on roughly 300 million units in 2020," said Bob O'Donnell, president and chief analyst, TECHnalysis Research. "As we look toward the future, it's the user experiences that matter and will determine who the real winners are. Devices designed to make work easier and to help us collaborate and connect are imperative for wherever or however we work. And it goes without saying that these devices must be secure—customers need the confidence that security is built-into a device."

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, vendor revenue in the worldwide server market grew 2.2% year over year to $22.6 billion during the third quarter of 2020 (3Q20). Worldwide server shipments declined 0.2% year over year to nearly 3.1 million units in 3Q20. Volume server revenue was up 5.8% to $19.0 billion, while midrange server revenue declined 13.9% to $2.6 billion, and high-end servers declined by 12.6% to $937 million.

"Global demand for enterprise servers was a bit muted during the third quarter of 2020 although we did see areas of strong demand," said Paul Maguranis, senior research analyst, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies at IDC. "From a regional perspective, server revenue within China grew 14.2% year over year. And worldwide revenues for servers running AMD CPUs were up 112.4% year over year while ARM-based servers grew revenues 430.5% year over year, albeit on a very small base of revenue."

The 56th edition of the TOP500 saw the Japanese Fugaku supercomputer solidify its number one status in a list that reflects a flattening performance growth curve. Although two new systems managed to make it into the top 10, the full list recorded the smallest number of new entries since the project began in 1993.

The entry level to the list moved up to 1.32 petaflops on the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark, a small increase from 1.23 petaflops recorded in the June 2020 rankings. In a similar vein, the aggregate performance of all 500 systems grew from 2.22 exaflops in June to just 2.43 exaflops on the latest list. Likewise, average concurrency per system barely increased at all, growing from 145,363 cores six months ago to 145,465 cores in the current list.

NVIDIA today introduced the next generation of NVIDIA Mellanox 400G InfiniBand, giving AI developers and scientific researchers the fastest networking performance available to take on the world's most challenging problems.

As computing requirements continue to grow exponentially in areas such as drug discovery, climate research and genomics, NVIDIA Mellanox 400G InfiniBand is accelerating this work through a dramatic leap in performance offered on the world's only fully offloadable, in-network computing platform. The seventh generation of Mellanox InfiniBand provides ultra-low latency and doubles data throughput with NDR 400 Gb/s and adds new NVIDIA In-Network Computing engines to provide additional acceleration.

New displays and meeting systems from Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) help creatives and office professionals work productively and comfortably in hybrid work environments. According to IDC research, 81% of employees believe monitors with higher resolution, better ergonomics and color improve the overall working experience. This expanded UltraSharp portfolio features state-of-the art technology, including mini-LED, built-in colorimeter and low blue light reduction screens.

"Technology that helps us do our best work is critical as we adapt to the new hybrid work environment," said Bert Park, senior vice president and general manager, Software & Peripherals Product Group, Dell Technologies. "Our monitors have always been the most desired companion to any PC, and our new line is no different. We're helping customers push productivity to the edge while delivering great performance, style and comfort." As world's number one monitors brand for seven years running, Dell offers an end-to-end ecosystem of collaboration tools that can meet the needs of every worker and offers the most EPEAT Gold registered monitors globally.

AMD today highlighted the latest expansion of the AMD EPYC processor ecosystem for virtualized and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) environments with VMware adding support for AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization-Encrypted State (SEV-ES) in its newest vSphere release, 7.0U1. With the latest release, VMware vSphere now enables AMD SEV-ES, which is part of AMD Infinity Guard, a robust set of modern, hardware enabled features found in all 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors. In addition to VM memory encryption, SEV-ES also provides encryption of CPU registers and provides VMware customers with easy-to-implement and enhanced security for their environments.

"As the modern data center continues to evolve into a virtualized, hybrid cloud environment, AMD and VMware are working together to make sure customers have access to systems that provide high levels of performance on virtualization workloads, while enabling advanced security features that are simple to implement for better protection of data," said Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Server Business Unit, AMD. "A virtualized data center with AMD EPYC processors and VMware enables customers to modernize the data center and have access to high-performance and leading-edge security features, across a wide variety of OEM platforms."

NUVIA, a leading-edge silicon design company, today announced the close of its Series B funding round, raising $240M. The funding round was led by Mithril Capital in partnership with Sehat Sutardja and Weili Dai (founders of Marvell Technology Group), funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC., and Temasek, with additional participation from Atlantic Bridge, Redline Capital, Capricorn Investment Group, Dell Technologies Capital, Mayfield, Nepenthe LLC and WRVI Capital. The closure of NUVIA's Series B round builds on a $53M Series A round, raised in November 2019. NUVIA was founded in February 2019 by John Bruno, Manu Gulati and Gerard Williams, with the vision to create the world's leading server processor.

Chrome OS has accelerated its expansion within businesses amid the shift to work from anywhere. The new Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise, a 14-inch premium business laptop or 2-in-1 from Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL), boosts productivity with on-the-go power, sophisticated security and fast connectivity features employees need. With the Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise, Dell expands its Latitude Chromebook lineup - now offering a mainstream and premium option - to give companies more choice in devices without sacrificing enterprise-class scale, manageability and security. With EPEAT Gold registration, the Latitude Chromebook Enterprise joins the industry's most sustainable commercial PC portfolio with recycled materials, sustainable packaging, energy efficient designs and EPEAT Gold registrations.

"This is not just another Chromebook," said Rahul Tikoo, senior vice president, Commercial Product Group, Dell Technologies. "Our latest Latitude Chromebook Enterprise is designed equal parts for employees and IT managers adopting Chrome OS in the enterprise. Employees will appreciate its sleek design and collaboration features that help them navigate new work dynamics, while IT managers have the management and security features they expect when deploying devices in a corporate environment."

Dell Technologies is exploring a potential spin-off of its 81% equity ownership interest in VMware. Although this exploration is in an early stage, Dell Technologies believes a spin-off could benefit both Dell Technologies and VMware shareholders, team members, customers and partners by simplifying capital structures and creating additional long-term enterprise value. Any potential spin-off would not occur prior to September 2021 and would be intended to qualify as tax-free for U.S. federal income tax purposes.

Additionally, Dell Technologies continues to evaluate a range of strategic options concerning its ownership interest in VMware, including maintaining its current ownership in the company. "The strategic relationship between Dell Technologies and VMware has never been stronger," said Michael Dell, chairman and chief executive officer, Dell Technologies. "For more than 20 years, we've innovated for our customers and created substantial growth and value for both companies and our teams. Regardless of the options we are exploring to create additional value, we are accelerating our strategy - which remains unchanged. We are focused on winning in the consolidating markets where we operate and innovating across the Dell Technologies portfolio to create integrated solutions that turn data into insights and action."

Summer is traditionally a season for togetherness - family vacations, backyard barbeques and outdoor festivals. Of course, all things traditional have been upended recently and the concept of togetherness has been redefined. As a father of two young girls whose job requires experiencing the latest Dell gaming systems and gaming titles, I've had to balance home with work. Sure, we might take turns playing our favorite games, but even in our cozy family ecosystem we all need space to do our own things. It's that recognition of individual needs that brings families together and makes me appreciate the Dell G Series even more - this is a product ecosystem designed for gamers at every level.

With its myriad of form factors, colors and configurations, the G Series stands out as one of the broadest selections of gaming systems Dell has ever offered. Its appeal parallels the strong growth of the PC gaming industry and the big tent of gamers it welcomes. What's consistent across the G Series ecosystem is the upscale design, performance muscle and great value - ultimately delivering the best gaming experiences without a significant investment. Dell is introducing the new G7 15/17, a powerful gaming laptop that stands out with its own sophisticated style that can easily go from classroom to gaming.

At CES 2020, AMD detailed a new technology called SmartShift. With the launch of the Ryzen 4000 Series "Renoir" processors, AMD has brought this technology to the processors powering the next generation of laptops. Designed to bring better performance to the overall system, the technology uses TDP balancing to boost the performance of processors. What that means is that the technology dynamically relocates the TDP budget to where it is most needed. For example, if the application is CPU intensive, the CPU will get a bigger TDP budget and will get better performance. And it goes the same way for GPU. Of course, the technology works only on AMD CPU and GPU combinations.

To use the SmartShift technology, the platform designer needs to implement it. For example, if a notebook manufacturer decides not to do it in its system, then it will not work. So far, we have only seen one model with SmartShift technology launching this year. The model in question is Dell's G5 15 SE. And it is going to stay like that. Frank Azore of AMD, has come out on Twitter and said that the reason for the lack of other laptops using this technology is because it is brand new and Dell jumped on it first. "No more SmartShift laptops are coming this year but the team is working hard on having more options ASAP for 2021." - he added. Hopefully, we will see more models being powered by this technology as the 2021 starts.

The new Alienware AW2521H is a 24.5-inch extreme refresh-rate gaming monitor by Dell. If you can live with its Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution, you can take advantage of its 360 Hz refresh-rate. The best part? This display uses an IPS panel (not TN-film), and supports NVIDIA G-Sync, letting it edge past the ASUS ROG Swift displays with 360 Hz. Dell did not provide an availability date, except mentioning that it will release later this year in the "Dark Side of the Moon" color scheme.

Dell Technologies unveiled the world's most intelligent and secure business PCs across its award-winning Latitude, Precision and OptiPlex portfolios to make work more efficient and safe - no matter the location. As the industry's most sustainable commercial PC portfolio, the new devices further advance Dell's commitment to sustainability with recycled materials, sustainable packaging, energy efficient designs and EPEAT Gold registrations.

Professionals can work smarter with Dell Optimizer, the automated Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based optimization technology, now available across Latitude, Precision and OptiPlex devices. The built-in software learns how each person works and adapts to their behavior to help them focus on the tasks that matter most. It works behind the scenes to improve overall application performance; enable faster log-in and secure lock outs; eliminate echoes and reduce background noise on conference calls; and extend battery run time.

Asetek, the creator of the all-in-one (AIO) liquid cooler and the global leader in liquid cooling solutions for gaming PCs and DIY enthusiasts, today announced its Rad Card GPU Cooler, bringing liquid cooled GPUs to space constrained PC cases. Asetek's Rad Card GPU Cooler, the industry's first slot-in PCIe radiator card, is first available in Dell-Alienware's newly introduced Alienware Aurora R11 PC.

Space concerns are a real issue for PC manufacturers, leaving GPU air cooling as the only option, until now. Asetek took this challenge head-on, innovating a new approach to radiator technology that reimagines the shape and location of the radiator. The Asetek Rad Card GPU Cooler fits into your motherboard's PCIe slot, just like any other add-in card. By utilizing PCIe slots, Asetek has defined a way to overcome PC manufacturers' dilemma of finding additional space inside the case for a liquid cooled GPU heat exchanger (HEx).

Update May 18th: This card may not be limited to just OEMs with Asetek tweeting "Not all of them made it to Alienware. Not what to do with these...". Asetek is very open about seeking feedback and is watching demand for this product from consumers, possibly even getting ready for a giveaway so it will be exciting to see what comes from this.

Dell today updated its premium XPS line of performance notebooks with the XPS 15 (9500) and XPS 17 (9700), as part of the company's Spring 2020 launch sequence. The two are primarily differentiated by screen size (15.6-inch vs. 17-inch). The XPS 15 comes with 16:10 resolutions of 4K UHD+ (3840 x 2400 pixels) InfinityEdge Touch, and WUXGA (1920 x 1200 pixels) InfinityEdge. Both offer Dolby Vision, and adjustable viewing angles. 10th gen Core "Comet Lake-H" processors power both.

Processor options include the Core i5-10300H, i7-10750H, i7-10875H, and i9-10885H. Memory options range between 8 GB single-channel thru 64 GB dual-channel. Graphics options start with GTX 1650 Ti for the XPS 15, and go up to RTX 2060 (mobile) for the XPS 17. Storage options only include NVMe SSDs, starting with 256 GB, and going all the way up to 1 TB. A star attraction with both is Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. The XPS 15 offers two Thunderbolt 3 ports; while the XPS 17 offers four. Killer AX1650 WLAN is standard issue.

Besides Alienware, Dell maintains a gaming notebook line under its main brand, with the G3 and G5, both endowed with 15.6-inch displays. The G5 15 SE is AMD-powered, featuring 15.6-inch Full HD 144 Hz displays, processor options that include the Ryzen 9 4900H, Ryzen 7 4800H, and Ryzen 5 4600H. This is the first notebook from Dell to feature the Radeon RX 5600M graphics based on "Navi 10." This notebook's Intel+NVIDIA alter-ego is the G15-5500, which comes with processor options that include the i5-10300H and i7-10750H; and various NVIDIA GeForce GPU options ranging from the GTX 1650 Ti to the RTX 2070 Super Max-Q. Memory options range between 8 GB to 32 GB; and storage between 128 GB to 1 TB NVMe SSD.

The G3 is Dell's entry-level gaming-grade notebook line. It offers 15.6-inch displays with Full HD resolutions, ranging between 60 Hz to 144 Hz, processor options that include the i5-10300H and i7-10750H, and graphics options ranging between the GTX 1650 and RTX 2060 (mobile). Memory options are either 8 GB single-channel or 16 GB dual-channel, both DDR4-2933. Dell has upped the game, doing away with HDD based storage options. The G3 starts with a 128 GB NVMe SSD, with capacities ranging up to 1 TB, and option for a second NVMe drive. Networking options include Killer 802.11ax and 1 GbE.

The 25 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium, originally established to develop 25, 50 and 100 Gbps Ethernet specifications, announced today it has changed its name to the Ethernet Technology Consortium in order to reflect a new focus on higher-speed Ethernet technologies.

The goal of the consortium is to enhance the Ethernet specification to operate at new speeds by utilizing specifications that are developed or in development. This allows the organization to work alongside other industry groups and standards bodies to adapt Ethernet at a pace that aligns with the rapidly evolving needs of the industry. The ETC has more than 45 members with top-level promoter members that include Arista, Broadcom, Cisco, Dell, Google, Mellanox and Microsoft.

It seems Dell is gearing up to refresh it's XPS 15 9500 and XPS 17 9700 laptops. A leaked image from the official Dell site first reported on by Notebook Check reveals the laptops will feature 16:10 3840x2400 displays, four USB-C ports likely with Thunderbolt 3 support, along with larger trackpads. There is no dedicated charging port so the laptop will likely use USB-PD for charging.

We don't know much more about the new machines but we can expect them to utilize Intel's recently released 10th Gen Comet Lake mobile chips paired with dedicated NVIDIA cards likely the 1650 Ti mobile at a minimum. It is likely that we will receive an official announcement from Dell announcing the laptops in the coming weeks.