Crucial , a leading global brand of memory and storage upgrades, today announced the immediate availability of DDR4 2933 MT/s Registered DIMM server modules, a new offering in its server memory product portfolio. Designed to keep servers running at full speed and peak efficiency in support of Intel's next-generation Xeon processor product families, the new RDIMM modules enable IT users to get the most out of their server infrastructure deployments.

"Our new DDR4 2933 MT/s RDIMMs are designed to deliver the speed required to maximise the memory throughput in the next generation of servers," says Teresa Kelley, VP & GM, Micron Consumer Products Group. "Today's data centres are running memory intensive applications that require a higher degree of overall system performance, and our new RDIMM modules were designed to meet this next level of system performance."

The latest analysis on the NAND Flash market by DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, forecasts that the ASP of NAND Flash will drop by around 10% QoQ respectively in 3Q18 and 4Q18. Although 3Q18 heralds the traditional peak season for the sales of consumer electronics, the growth of the end market demand has been weaker than anticipated. At the same time, the supply of 3D-NAND Flash continues to expand.

DRAMeXchange points out that the main reason behind the falling prices is oversupply at various levels. First, the annual shipments for smartphones this year are expected to be just on par with last year's. The replacement demand for smartphones has been sluggish due to the lack of differentiation among products in terms of hardware specifications. Second, notebook shipments were very strong in 1H18, so the seasonal shipment growth for notebooks in 2H18 will be lackluster compared with the growth in the year's first half as the base period. Third, the competition is very intense in the server SSD market. Although demand for server systems is growing steadily, there is an oversupply of server SSDs because too many suppliers are engaging in this profitable segment. Finally, NAND Flash suppliers have raised their output forecasts as they have expanded their production capacity and improved the yield rates of their 64/72-layer 3D-NAND production. Given the above factors that have led to a persistent oversupply, contract prices of various NAND Flash products will remain weak through 2H18.

AMD today announced unprecedented adoption of its AMD Ryzen PRO processors - including new notebooks and desktops powered by Ryzen PRO processors with built-in Radeon Vega graphics now available from the world's three largest enterprise PC OEMs. AMD Ryzen PRO APUs for premium commercial desktop and notebooks provide commercial PC buyers with new levels of choice and innovation and enable Dell, HP, and Lenovo to create a range of business systems, from sleek enterprise notebooks to powerful commercial desktops. Combined, these systems make up the broadest portfolio of AMD processor-based enterprise PCs in the company's history.

AMD today has officially released specs and the listing of graphics cards that are being rebranded to the OEM-only RX 500X series. For all the rumors and speculation that abounded around a super-charged, maybe even Vega-sprinkled new Polaris architecture from AMD has seen their dreams of interesting times squelched unceremoniously.

What were before expected reports have now been rendered true: these are nothing more than an OEM-specific rebrand of AMD's RX 500 graphics cards. They're just direct rebadges - not a single MHz was increased across the entire portfolio, except for one lonely graphics card: the RX 550X has apparently seen a bump in clockspeeds, from the RX 550's "up to 1183 MHz" to the RX 550X's "up to 1287 MHz). Aside from that, folks, move along: there's nothing to see here.

The Spectre/Meltdown road is long and pocked with lawsuits and security holes as it is, and Microsoft is one of the players that's trying to put the asphalt back to tip-top, Autobahn-worth shape. The company has already improved users' security to the Meltdown and Spectre exploits on its OS side; however, hardware patches, and specifically BIOS-editing ones are much harder to deploy and distribute by the PC chain. That may be one of the reasons why Microsoft is now again stepping up with software-based mitigations for Intel-based systems, specifically.

The new updates introduce a software-based CPU microcode revision update, and work at the OS-level to plug some security holes on your Intel processors that might otherwise remain unpatched. The reasons for them remaining unpatched can be many: either Intel taking even more time to deploy patches to the still vulnerable systems; your OEMs not deploying the Intel CPU microcode revisions via a BIOS update; or the good old "I forgot I could do it" user story. Of course, being software based means these Microsoft patches will have to be reapplied should users format their Windows system. The update can for now only be manually downloaded and installed, and can only be applied to version 1709 (Fall Creators Update) and Windows Server version 1709 (Server Core), but that's definitely better than the alternative of forcing less knowledgeable users to try and find their way through BIOS updates. Of course, that is assuming OEMs will ever push BIOS updates to their products.

Intel today shared in a blog post that they are deploying microcode solutions that have been developed and validated over the last several weeks. These updates aim to patch security vulnerabilities recently found in Intel processors, and will be distributed, mostly, via OEM firmware updates - users who want to have their system hardened against Spectre and Meltdown exploits will have to ensure that their system manufacturer of choice makes these microcode updates available. If they don't do it in a timely fashion, users have no choice but to be vocal about that issue - Intel has now done its part in this matter.

This is the second wave of Intel's patches to mitigate the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, after the first, hasty patch sent users on towards unstable, crashing systems and the inevitable update rollback. Security had already been reinstated, of sorts, for Intel's Skylake processors, but left users of any other affected Intel CPU family out in the cold. Here's hoping this is the one update that actually sticks after thorough testing and validation.

Ruckus Networks, an ARRIS company, today announced it has signed a global original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement with Dell EMC to deliver Ruckus' broad portfolio of wireless solutions, including access points (APs), controllers, virtualized and data analytics assets, and Cloudpath secure network access software-along with Ruckus IoT and CBRS LTE products-as Dell-branded solutions. This agreement gives Dell EMC's networking sales team and end-user customers access to Ruckus' award-winning portfolio of secure wireless connectivity solutions and strong brand presence not available through alternative suppliers. The agreement is effective immediately and encompasses a range of sales, marketing and customer support programs in international markets, including APAC, EMEA and the Americas.

"Delivering innovative wireless networking solutions to our partners is key to address the insatiable demand for high-performance wireless networking in the enterprise," said Dan Rabinovitsj, president, Ruckus Networks, an ARRIS company. "The Dell EMC brand and market reach is complementary to our own and represents a significant path for growth for both companies across a range of vertical markets, including education, public infrastructure, the federal government and service providers. We view Dell EMC's strength in storage and scalable computing platforms as critical to collaboration where complete bundled solutions are required to compete and win."

At the Qualcomm Technology Summit, AMD made a surprise appearance to shed some light on their partnership in Qualcomm. The objective: to integrate Qualcomm's LTE modems in AMD-powered mobile platforms, offering always connected capabilities to laptops and convertibles. AMD's Kevin Lensing took to the stage to talk about how AMD's reference designs for the Ryzen Mobile platform (which includes deployment of the company's Ryzen 5 2500U and Ryzen 7 2700U APUs, for instance) shipped to OEMs with an integrated Qualcomm LTE modem - a clear nod at another design point OEMs could look towards integration on their products. These should allow for online connectivity on the go, offering users more ways to keep connected, whether for work or play.

Of course, this is hardly the first time mobile PC form-factors have had this kind of modem integration; Intel has done it for quite some time on their products, with the XMM7260 and XMM7360 that it has applied to more business-oriented devices or Chromebooks. However, adding LTE enablement as an option for AMD-based platforms at this scale is actually a first for AMD. Naturally, the integration of yet another piece of silicon to a mobile device will undoubtedly add to cost and battery consumption, besides adding some more question that end-users have to answer: which carrier option are available, which of those to go with... But having more options is usually better than the alternative, is it not?

Today, Intel announced the Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X Series, the world's most responsive data center solid state drive, is now available in a new 750GB capacity in both half-height, half-length add-in card and a hot-swappable 2.5-inch U.2 form factor. Both form factors and capacities will be broadly available this month.

Increased capacity and multiple form factors expand data center implementation options and deliver both solution-level and total cost of ownership flexibility for customers. Intel Optane technology for data centers combines the attributes of memory and storage with low latency, high endurance, outstanding quality of service and high throughput, creating a new data tier that increases scale per server and reduces transaction costs.

It isn't unusual for AMD or NVIDIA to launch OEM-specific graphics chips, and it would seem that AMD is doing just so with its rebranded yet improved RX 500 series. Now, it's time for the RX 540 to surface, which, like the name implies, flies right below the RX 550 in terms of specs, though you wouldn't know it without a closer look.

The chip packs the same 8 CUs as the RX 550 (512 stream processors), but its memory bandwidth (in 2 GB or 4 GB flavors) peaks at 96 GB/s (lower than the RX 550's 112 GB/s.) However, its core clocks see an interesting boost from the RX 550's 1183 MHz boost clocks to a "up to 1219 MHz" value, which should alleviate the performance impact from the stunted memory bandwidth. This is a GPU that's likely to be used by OEMs and system integrators, whether on desktop computers or in laptops, though I do have to wonder regarding this configuration. I'd expect higher clocks on the core to increase power consumption more than the offset allowed by the reduced memory clocks, but then again, I'm not an AMD engineer.