Gigabyte Technology, one of the top global manufacturers of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, announces today the latest BIOS of B560 AORUS motherboards. Enhanced by the 12+1 phases DrMOS power stage with 60 Amps for each and full coverage VRM thermal design, B560 AORUS motherboards can support Intel Core i9 11900K (F) series processors overclocking to all cores 5.1 GHz. The exclusive anti-interference design of memory circuit enables DDR4 speed raising up to XMP 4800 MHz, and overclocking performance boost to DDR4 5300 MHz. which demonstrates GIGABYTE's strong R&D strength and persistence in quality. Users can enjoy the performance boost of time-limited overclocking by simply updating to the latest BIOS to meet their special needs.1

Intel B series chipset motherboards have been always excluded from overclocking due to the product positioning. Although the memory XMP overclocking is unlocked on 500 series, the processor frequency can only reach up to 4.8 GHz by Turbo Boost. Thanks to the efforts of Gigabyte's R&D team, the processor can be overclocked to 5.1 GHz and maintain low temperature under the Prime95 no AVX burn-in test. This powerful performance benefits from the top-quality materials of GIGABYTE AORUS motherboards and product design capabilities, which include 12+1 phases/ 60Apms DrMOS power stage, 6 layers 2Oz ultra-cool PCB, full-covered VRM thermal design, and the latest Smart Fan 6 technology for temperature control. These features allow processors to have a stable and pure power supply under ultra-high frequency operation, providing the most solid backing for the CPU limited-time overclocking.

QNAP Systems, Inc., today launched the QM2-2P2G2T PCIe card which adds M.2 SSD slots and 2.5 GbE connectivity to a QNAP NAS or PC/server/workstation. NAS users can benefit from 2.5 GbE connectivity, improve overall NAS performance by enabling SSD caching, and upgrade NAS storage capacity without occupying any 3.5-inch drive bays. PC/server/workstation users can increase their storage capacity while also boosting overall IOPS performance by offloading bandwidth-demanding tasks to SSDs to minimize application loading times.

The QM2-2P2G2T features dual 2.5GBASE-T Multi-Gigabit (2.5G/1G/100M/10M) network ports to boost bandwidth-demanding tasks. M.2 SSD thermal sensors allow real-time temperature monitoring, with a quiet cooling module (heatsink and smart fan) to keep the SSDs running within optimal temperatures.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the company focused on making enterprise hardware and software, has today mistakenly listed some of Intel's upcoming 3rd generation Xeon Scalable processors. Called Ice Lake-SP, the latest server processor generation is expected to launch sometime in the coming days, with a possible launch date being the March 23rd "Intel Unleashed" webcast. The next generation of processors will finally bring a new vector of technologies Intel needs in server space. That means the support for PCIe 4.0 protocol for higher speed I/O and octa-channel DDR4 memory controller for much greater bandwidth. The CPU lineup will for the first time use Intel's advanced 10 nm node called 10 nm SuperFin.

Today, in the leaked HPE listing, we get to see some of the Xeon models Intel plans to launch. Starting from 32-core models, all the way to 40-core models, all SKUs above 28 cores are supposed to use dual die configuration to achieve high core counts. The limit of a single die is 28 cores. HPE listed a few models, with the highest-end one being the Intel Xeon Platinum XCC 8380 processor. It features 40 cores with 80 threads and a running frequency of 2.3 GHz. If you are wondering about TDP, it looks like the 10 nm SuperFin process is giving good results, as the CPU is rated only for 270 Watts of power.

TYAN, an industry-leading server platform design manufacturer and a MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation subsidiary, today introduced AMD EPYC 7003 Series Processor-based server platforms featuring efficiency and performance enhancements in hardware, security, and memory density for the modern data center.

"Big data has become capital today. Large amounts of data and faster answers drive better decisions. TYAN's industry-leading server platforms powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors enable businesses to make more accurate decisions with higher precision," said Danny Hsu, Vice President of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation's Server Infrastructure BU. "Moving the bar once more for workload performance, EPYC 7003 Series processors provide the performance needed in the heart of the enterprise to help IT professionals drive faster time to results," said Ram Peddibhotla, corporate vice president, EPYC product management, AMD. "Time is the new metric for efficiency and EPYC 7003 Series processors are the perfect choice for the most diverse workloads, helping provide more and better data to drive better business outcomes."

AMD has four weeks ago acknowledged that there was a problem with 500 series motherboard chipsets. The problem has occurred with a few chipset functions like USB connectivity, USB 2.0 audio crackling (e.g. DAC/AMP combos), and USB/PCIe Gen 4 exclusion. To fix these problems, consumers were forced to either put up with problems or lower the PCIe standard from Gen 4 to Gen 3 and switch USB protocol revision from 3.0 to 2.0. This of course wasn't the ideal solution, especially for bandwidth-heavy applications. Users have submitted many reports to AMD, and the company appears to have found a root cause of these issues. AMD has published a Reddit thread, that reports that the company found a solution to the problem and that we are going to see a fix for it in a form in AGESA BIOS update.

AMD RedditAMD has prepared AGESA 1.2.0.2 to deploy this update, and we plan to distribute 1.2.0.2 to our motherboard partners for integration in about a week. Customers can expect downloadable BIOSes containing AGESA 1.2.0.2 to begin with beta updates in early April. The exact update schedule for your system will depend on the test and implementation schedule for your vendor and specific motherboard model. If you continue to experience intermittent USB connectivity issues after updating your system to AGESA 1.2.0.2, we encourage you to download the standalone AMD Bug Report Tool and open a ticket with AMD Customer Support.

Demand for notebook computers is expected to remain strong throughout 2Q21 due to the persisting stay-at-home economy that arose in the wake of the pandemic, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In response to the high demand for notebooks, PC OEMs are actively raising a consistent inventory of components, including client SSDs. Nonetheless, client SSDs are now in increasingly tight supply because the preexisting shortage of NAND Flash controllers is now exacerbated by the power outage at Samsung's Austin-based semiconductor plant. SSD manufacturers are therefore preparing to raise the prices of SSDs. Accordingly, TrendForce has also revised up its forecast of client SSD prices for 2Q21 from "mostly flat" to a 3-8% increase QoQ instead.

Addressing the demands of the modern data center, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced a range of new data center products and solutions, including a new family of Alveo SmartNICs, smart world AI video analytics applications, an accelerated algorithmic trading reference design for sub-microsecond trading, and the Xilinx App Store.

Today's most demanding and complex applications, from networking and AI analytics to financial trading, require low-latency and real-time performance. Achieving this level of performance has been limited to expensive and lengthy hardware development. With these new products and solutions, Xilinx is eliminating the barriers for software developers to quickly create and deploy software-defined, hardware accelerated applications on Alveo accelerator cards.

GIGABYTE Technology, (TWSE: 2376), an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today announced the G262-ZR0 for HPC, AI, and data analytics. Designed to support the highest-level of performance in GPU computing, the G262-ZR0 incorporates fast PCIe 4.0 throughput in addition to NVIDIA HGX technologies and NVIDIA NVLink to provide industry leading bandwidth performance.

With the debut of PCIe 4.0 standard, SSD manufacturers have started launching a new generation of storage devices, with unseen speeds before. Today's PCIe 4.0 SSDs can reach up to 8.0 GB/s reads and writes, all thanks to the bandwidth-heavy PCIe protocol. However, enterprise workloads are always requiring more and more bandwidth to satisfy their needs. Data is being moved in immense quantities and faster hardware is always welcome. The previous PCIe 4.0 standard is about to kneel to its successor - PCIe 5.0 protocol. Having double the amount of bandwidth, the new standard is set to bring unseen speeds.

The PCIe 5.0 protocol offers 32 GT/s per lane, making up to 64 GB/s in the full x16 implementation. However, when it comes to SSDs, as they use x4 lanes, it will increase the maximum speed to 16 GB/s, doubling the previous bandwidth. Silicon Motion, the maker of NAND flash controllers, has announced that the company is going to debut a PCIe 5.0 controller next year. "We are excited about enterprise-grade PCIe Gen5 controller, which we will have taped out early next year and sample in the second half of 2022", said Wallace Kuo, chief executive of Silicon Motion, during a conference call. Launching just in time to pair with Intel's Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors that support the PCIe 5.0 protocol, Silicon Motion is probably expecting to grab its market share there.

Applications such as data analytics, autonomous-driving and medical diagnostics are driving extraordinary demands for machine learning and hyperscale compute infrastructure. To meet these demands, Microchip Technology Inc. today announced the world's first PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0 switch solutions—the Switchtec PFX PCIe 5.0 family—doubling the interconnect performance for dense compute, high speed networking and NVM Express (NVMe ) storage. Together with the XpressConnect retimers, Microchip is the industry's only supplier of both PCIe Gen 5 switches and PCIe Gen 5 retimer products, delivering a complete portfolio of PCIe Gen 5 infrastructure solutions with proven interoperability.

"Accelerators, graphic processing units (GPUs), central processing units (CPUs) and high-speed network adapters continue to drive the need for higher performance PCIe infrastructure. Microchip's introduction of the world's first PCIe 5.0 switch doubles the PCIe Gen 4 interconnect link rates to 32 GT/s to support the most demanding next-generation machine learning platforms," said Andrew Dieckmann, associate vice president of marketing and applications engineering for Microchip's data center solutions business unit. "Coupled with our XpressConnect family of PCIe 5.0 and Compute Express Link (CXL ) 1.1/2.0 retimers, Microchip offers the industry's broadest portfolio of PCIe Gen 5 infrastructure solutions with the lowest latency and end-to-end interoperability."

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.

At the beginning of 2021, MSI, a would-leading motherboards brand, had announed the latest Intel 500 series platforms will launch soon. Through few weeks of waiting, on January 27th, MSI Intel 500 series motherboards are officially launched.

As MSI official announcement mentioned, all of MSI 500 series motherboards with 11th Gen Intel Core processors support PCIe 4.0, and all of Z590 Wi-Fi motherboards have at least one 2.5G LAN and the latest Wi-Fi 6E solution which extends to 6 GHz spectrum providing remarkble user experience when streaming, gaming and even working from home.

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND Flash controller integrated circuits and storage solutions, announced today that it is now shipping secure SSD solutions with FIPS 140-2 Certification. In today's world, consumer and corporate data are vulnerable to attacks by hackers, viruses and even rogue governments staging cyber-attacks. Phison has recognized these security issues and addressed these threats by implementing FIPS 140-2 security technology in SATA and PCIe product lines.

Phison provided technical support for their customizable SSD solutions during the Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP) process. Companies have to pass it in order to list themselves as the validated cryptographic module vendor. Because Phison has FIPS 140-2 certified solutions, our customers can now choose to leverage existing validated Phison modules so they can reduce the time and effort spent on FIPS validation of their own.

Alienware, the gaming division of Dell Technologies, has today announced a lineup refresh, meaning that all of the existing products will get upgraded to versions with the latest hardware. And to start off, the company has equipped their thin and powerful Alienware m15 R4 and m17 R4 laptops with the latest hardware we saw announced just yesterday. The laptops are equipped with 12-phase voltage regulation modules to power the newest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series of mobile GPUs. To pair with a strong GPU, Alienware decided to use 10th generation Intel Comet Lake-H designs. These new laptops can be equipped with up to 4 TB of PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD storage and up to 32 GB of 2933 MHz RAM. For display, options range from FHD LCD to a 4K OLED panel and 360 Hz refresh rate for the m17 R4 model.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and gaming gears, today announced the latest compact size design power supply: P1000GM - 1000 W 80 PLUS Gold certified with a fully modular design. To meet the needs of high-end gamers and overclockers, P1000GM provides up to 1000 watts of power and is also made of high-quality materials. The main capacitors are made in Japan, coupled with various OVP/OPP/SCP/UVP/OCP/OTP current and voltage protection and smart semi-passive silent fan to provide up to 10 years of warranty. The fully modular cable and single +12V rail design simplify the installation steps and time for gamers. In addition, P1000GM leads the industry in reducing the size of the 1000-watt power supply, making it easy to install large-wattage power supplies in various cases, even small cases that have recently become more and more popular.

The power requirement of the new graphics card and the high-end CPU is getting higher and higher. In order to meet the needs of high-end gamers and overclockers, achieve better power efficiency, and provide stable power, GIGABYTE has launched the P1000GM with an enormous power of 1000 watts. The P1000GM can meet high-end graphics cards and CPUs' power requirements, so gamers can enjoy the graphics-intensive games without worrying about the power shortage. The fully modular design only installs the needed cables, making the whole system cleaner and allowing better heat dissipation. The P1000GM provides six 6+2 pin PCIe connectors to support the large-wattage graphics cards.

OWC, the premier zero-emissions Mac and PC technology company, and a respected provider of Memory, External Drives, SSDs, Mac & PC docking solutions, and performance upgrade kits announces the OWC U2 Shuttle as the world's first U.2 carrier shuttle for 3.5" drive bays that combines four NVMe M.2 SSDs. It offers video editors, audio producers, photographers, and graphic designers everything they've always wanted in a multiple blade SSD: blistering speed, massive capacity, RAID-ready flexibility, and swappable convenience. The OWC U2 Shuttle can be used with U.2 port-equipped PCs and servers, as well as OWC storage and PCIe expansion solutions.

With four NVMe SSDs the OWC U2 Shuttle gives you more RAID options than a dual drive enclosure or adapter card. Now you can harness the power of RAID 0, 1, 4, 5, or 10 via your choice of hardware cards or RAID utilities including SoftRAID, the easiest to use, most fully featured software RAID package available. This powerful and intuitive software RAID utility offers maximum volume capacity, optimum drive performance, data protection, or a combination of attributes.

Intel has just released its "Architecture Instruction Set Extensions and Future Features Programming Reference" manual, which serves the purpose of providing the developers' information about Intel's upcoming hardware additions which developers can utilize later on. Today, thanks to the @InstLatX64 on Twitter we have information that Intel is bringing on-package High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) solution to its next-generation Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors. Specifically, there are two instructions mentioned: 0220H - HBM command/address parity error and 0221H - HBM data parity error. Both instructions are there to address data errors in HBM so the CPU operates with correct data.

The addition of HBM is just one of the many new technologies Sapphire Rapids brings. The platform is supposedly going to bring many new technologies like an eight-channel DDR5 memory controller enriched with Intel's Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA). To connect to all of the external accelerators, the platform uses PCIe 5.0 protocol paired with CXL 1.1 standard to enable cache coherency in the system. And as a reminder, this would not be the first time we see a server CPU use HBM. Fujitsu has developed an A64FX processor with 48 cores and HBM memory, and it is powering today's most powerful supercomputer - Fugaku. That is showing how much can a processor get improved by adding a faster memory on-board. We are waiting to see how Intel manages to play it out and what we end up seeing on the market when Sapphire Rapids is delivered.

In the upstream semiconductor industry, the major foundries such as TSMC and UMC are reporting fully loaded capacities, while in the downstream, the available production capacity for OSAT is also lacking, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Given this situation, suppliers of NAND Flash controller ICs such as Phison and Silicon Motion are now unable to meet upside demand from their clients. Not only have many controller IC suppliers temporarily stopped offering quotes for new orders, but they are also even considering raising prices soon because the negotiations between NAND Flash suppliers and module houses over 1Q21 contracts are now at the critical juncture. The potential increases in prices of controller ICs from outsourced suppliers (IC design houses) are currently estimated to be the range of 15-20%.

With regards to the demand side, demand has risen significantly for eMMC solutions with medium- and low-density specifications (i.e., 64 GB and lower), for which NAND Flash suppliers have mostly stopped updating the NAND Flash process technology, while maintaining support with the legacy 2D NAND or the 64L 3D NAND process. This is on account of strong sales for Chromebook devices and TVs. As older processes gradually account for a lowering portion of bit output proportions from NAND Flash suppliers, these companies are exhibiting a lowered willingness to directly supply such eMMC products to clients. As a result, clients now need to turn to memory module houses, which are able to source NAND Flash components and controllers, to procure eMMC products in substantial quantities.

XPG, a fast-growing provider of systems, components, and peripherals for Gamers, Esports Pros, and Tech Enthusiasts, today announces the XPG SPECTRIX S20G PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 solid state drive (SSD). The SPECTRIX S20G is an SSD built with form and performance in mind with its distinct x-shaped RBG lighting and excellent read/write speeds.

The XPG SPECTRIX S20G is a gaming SSD through and through and its styling reflects this. It sports a distinctive and prominent x-shaped RGB design that outshines the competition. The RGB light effects can be customized via software. What's more, a hairline-brushed finish gives the SSD a formidable yet elegant look that will intimidate and impress.

Today, thanks to the ServeTheHome forum member "111alan", we have the first pictures of the alleged Intel Sapphire Rapids Xeon processor. Pictured is what appears to be a dual-die design similar to Cascade Lake-SP design with 56 cores and 112 threads that uses two dies. The Sapphire Rapids is a 10 nm SuperFin design that allegedly comes even in the dual-die configuration. To host this processor, the motherboard needs an LGA4677 socket with 4677 pins present. The new LGA socket, along with the new 10 nm Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors are set for delivery in 2021 when Intel is expected to launch its new processors and their respective platforms.

The processor pictured is clearly a dual-die design, meaning that Intel used some of its Multi-Chip Package (MCM) technology that uses EMIB to interconnect the silicon using an active interposer. As a reminder, the new 10 nm Sapphire Rapids platform is supposed to bring many new features like a DDR5 memory controller paired with Intel's Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA); a brand new PCIe 5.0 standard protocol with a 32 GT/s data transfer rate, and a CXL 1.1 support for next-generation accelerators. The exact configuration of this processor is unknown, however, it is an engineering sample with a clock frequency of a modest 2.0 GHz.

Samsung's latest 980 Pro SSD is not unlike the hypercar of solid state storage: ridiculously fast, ludicrously expensive. The company had announced that a 2 TB version would be available sometime near these holidays, and Scan.co.uk has just listed one such 2 TB part. If you want one of the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs money can buy, and one of the only ones based on TLC (Triple Layer Cell) technology, then you might be in luck.

The reseller is listing the 2 TB version of the 980 Pro for a cool £443 (including tax), which translates to about $590. That's more than double the pricing of some very interesting PCIe 4.0 solutions. Considering the 1 TB version ticks at read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s and write speeds at up to 5,000 MB/s with an endurance of 600 TBW, expect the 2 TB version to be even faster and more consistent. Maybe improve your storage subsystem while we are faced with the current gaming hardware shortages? Consider, however, that delivery is estimated for early January 2021.

Greenliant has secured major design wins with its EnduroSLC solid state drives (SSDs) in a wide range of demanding, extreme environment applications for customers that need best-in-class reliability and product longevity. Greenliant's proprietary EnduroSLC Technology substantially enhances data retention and extends the write endurance of 1-bit-per-cell SSDs with advanced hardware ECC capabilities and NAND flash management algorithms. EnduroSLC SSDs not only offer superior data retention capabilities under complex temperature conditions, but also support 50K, 100K and industry-leading, ultra high 250K+ program-erase (P/E) cycles, which are at least a 5x improvement over pseudo-SLC (pSLC) SSDs and a 50x improvement over MLC NAND-based products.

For systems that are in remote locations and costly to maintain-from satellite to subsea communications-customers recognize the value of EnduroSLC SSDs; they can reliably operate and retain data for long periods of time in harsh conditions. Long-life, write-intensive products, such as transportation black box recorders and industrial data loggers, have also benefitted from the enhanced features of EnduroSLC SSDs. EnduroSLC storage products are designed with Greenliant's advanced SATA, NVMe PCIe and eMMC controllers, operate at industrial temperatures (-40 to +85 degrees Celsius) and are backed by the company's Long-Term Availability program (http://bit.ly/SSD-LTA-program), providing an extra level of support.

When AMD introduced its Smart Access Memory technology, everyone was wondering will other GPU and CPU providers, namely Intel and NVIDIA, develop a similar solution to complement their offerings. The SAM technology is just AMD's way of naming PCIe resizable Base Address Register (BAR) technology, which has been present in PCI specifications for years as an optional feature. Why it's emerging now you might wonder. Well, the currently used PCIe revision has reached enough bandwidth on the bus to complement the complex data movement that GPU requires and now supports the use of the wider VRAM frame buffer.

It appears that not only AMD has this technology in its portfolio. ASUS has updated its BIOS firmware for its ROG Maximus XII Apex motherboard based on the Intel Z490 chipset, with some pretty interesting features. According to Tom's Hardware, we have information that the next release of BIOS firmware update 1003 for the ROG Maximus XII Apex motherboard will bring support for resizable BAR, making it a first on an Intel platform. For now, the beta 1002 BIOS supports it, however, a stable version will roll out in BIOS 1003. With the motherboard using PCIe 3.0 standard, a lower-bandwidth revision compared to AMD's platform, it will be interesting to see how resizable BAR is performing once the first tests come.

Update 09:45 am UTC: Chris Wefers, ASUS PR Germany, has announced that resizable BAR will be coming to all ASUS motherboards with Intel Z490/H470/B460 chipset, with alleged 13.37% performance increase in Forza Horizon 4, per ASUSes testing. You can see the test configuration in the image below.

Total NAND Flash revenue reached US$14.5 billion in 3Q20, a 0.3% increase QoQ, while total NAND Flash bit shipment rose by 9% QoQ, but the ASP fell by 9% QoQ, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. The market situation in 3Q20 can be attributed to the rising demand from the consumer electronics end as well as the recovering smartphone demand before the year-end peak sales season. Notably, in the PC market, the rise of distance education contributed to the growing number and scale of Chromebook tenders, but the increase in the demand for Chromebook devices has not led to a significant increase in NAND Flash consumption because storage capacity is rather limited for this kind of notebook computer. Moreover, clients in the server and data center segments had aggressively stocked up on components and server barebones during 2Q20 due to worries about the impact of the pandemic on the supply chain. Hence, their inventories reached a fairly high level by 3Q20. Clients are now under pressure to control and reduce their inventories during this second half of the year. With them scaling back procurement, the overall NAND Flash demand has also weakened, leading to a downward turn in the contract prices of most NAND Flash products.

When NVIDIA announced its contest on Twitter for users to win a GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card, by simply re-tweeting the post tagging a friend, there was something strange in the tweet. The concept art of the RTX 3070 card used in the post was a bit off. Instead of it featuring a regular design and connectors, the RTX 3070 picture used had an 8-pin PCIe power connector to power the card. That leads many to wonder what is going on with NVIDIA's new 12-pin power connector and has the company decided to abandon it so soon. However, we got the first response to those rumors from NVIDIA spokesman for Tom's Hardware. The company has responded that "tweet used concept art only, which is being replaced." So it was a marketing mistake, which NVIDIA is aware of and is fixing, and no, the 12-pin connector is not going away anytime soon it seems.