Kioxia Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, today announced new consumer SSDs scheduled to be released in the third quarter of 2023. The EXCERIA PLUS G3 Series will leverage PCIe 4.0 technology and offer up to 2 terabytes (TB) of capacity. The new series is well-suited to mainstream users of high performance gaming PCs, desktops and notebooks, bringing the speed and affordability that they require. The EXCERIA PLUS G3 Series, which is a product under development, will be on reference exhibit at COMPUTEX TAIPEI from May 30 to June 2 at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center.

Featuring Kioxia's BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory TLC (Triple-Level-Cell), the EXCERIA PLUS G3 Series utilizes an M.2 2280 type single-sided form factor suitable for both desktops and mobile systems. The new drives will also support Kioxia's SSD Utility Management Software, which assists users with SSD monitoring and maintenance.

ADATA, the world's leading memory module and flash memory brand, in association with its subsidiary gaming performance brand, XPG, will take part in the world's largest computer trade show in Taipei from May 30 to June 2, 2023- Computex Taipei. As an industry leader, ADATA continues to implement the company's brand philosophy of "Innovating the Future" through its businesses. In addition to providing new technological products and solutions, ADATA is also committed to promoting the sustainable development of corporations in order to lead the future.

To realize this year's theme of "The Xtreme Future Leader - Infinite Innovation," ADATA has leveraged emerging technologies to launch new products that are sustainable and extraordinarily innovative including the most powerful Gen 5 SSD, industry-leading CXL (Compute Express Link) memory module, CAMM (Compression Attached Memory Module), XPG titanium power supply (XPG FUSION 1600 W), and professional industrial solutions. Be sure to visit Computex to experience a full range of new products!

With more countries creating initiatives to develop homegrown processors capable of powering powerful supercomputing facilities, India has just presented its development milestone with Aum HPC. Thanks to information from the report by The Next Platform, we learn that India has developed a processor for powering its exascale high-performance computing (HPC) system. Called Aum HPC, the CPU was developed by the National Supercomputing Mission of the Indian government, which funded the Indian Institute of Science, the Department of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, and C-DAC to design and manufacture the Aum HPC processors and create strong, strong technology independence.

The Aum HPC is based on Armv8.4 CPU ISA and represents a chiplet processor. Each compute chiplet features 48 Arm Zeus Cores based on Neoverse V1 IP, so with two chiplets, the processor has 96 cores in total. Each core gets 1 MB of level two cache and 1 MB of system cache, for 96 MB L2 cache and 96 MB system cache in total. For memory, the processor uses 16-channel 32-bit DDR5-5200 with a bandwidth of 332.8 GB/s. To expand on that, HBM memory is present, and there is 64 GB of HBM3 with four controllers capable of achieving a bandwidth of 2.87 TB/s. As far as connectivity, the Aum HPC processor has 64 PCIe Gen 5 Lanes with CXL enabled. It is manufactured on a 5 nm node from TSMC. With a 3.0 GHz typical and 3.5+ GHz turbo frequency, the Aum HPC processor is rated for a TDP of 300 Watts. It is capable of producing 4.6+ TeraFLOPS per socket. Below are illustrations and tables comparing Aum HPC to Fujitsy A64FX, another Arm HPC-focused design.

Global memory leader, Team Group, continues to develop and manufacture innovative, high-performance, and reliable industrial memory storage products, providing customers with convenient and flexible solutions. Today, it is releasing the brand new P845-M30 SSD, designed for the M.2 2230 form factor and PCIe Gen 4 interface. This compact, high-performance SSD is suitable for mini industrial PCs, handheld embedded applications, and AIoT-related tasks.

The P845-M30 comes with 112 layers of high-quality 3D NAND flash memory and uses page mapping technology to reduce its block P/E cycling frequency, extending its lifespan, and increasing its random access speeds. It is available in capacities ranging from 256 GB to 1 TB and measures only 30 mm in length. In addition, its support of the PCIe Gen 4 interface allows it to provide high-speed transfers with low power consumption. The P845-M30 can upgrade your device's performance without taking up space, making it the ideal SSD solution for mini industrial computers, which require a small form factor and large capacities.

VisionTek Products LLC, a leading provider of high-performance upgrades and accessories for PCs and Macs, today unveiled its new lineup of M.2 solid-state drives (SSDs) featuring exceptional speed, thermal management and durability. These next-generation form factor M.2 drives cater to demanding workloads and offer blazing fast read and write speeds up to 7,500 MB/s.

The DLX4 PCIe 4.0 SSDs feature a PCIe 4.0 interface for high-bandwidth, low-latency performance for the most demanding of workloads. The range includes 2230, 2242 and 2280 SSDs to support a variety of systems and devices. Capacities range from 500 GB to 4 TB, making the SSDs perfect for applications like 3D rendering, gaming and video editing.

Solidigm, a leading global provider of innovative NAND flash memory solutions, is expanding its D5 Product Series with the Solidigm D5-P5430, a new QLC solid-state storage drive (SSD) optimized for mainstream and read-intensive workloads. With most of today's enterprise applications read-dominant, the D5-P5430—a 4th gen PCIe QLC SSD—offers substantial storage density and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) opportunities while delivering read performance that is equivalent to the most widely-adopted TLC SSDs.

The D5-P5430 is optimized for mainstream workloads (e.g., email/unified communications, decision support systems, object storage, and virtual desktop infrastructure) and read-intensive workloads (e.g., content delivery networks, data lakes/pipelines, video-on-demand). These workloads are typically 80% reads or higher and need to move massive amounts of data at high throughput.

Crucial's T700 PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD series has been previewed a couple of times, showing some impressive sequential read and write performance, and now, Crucial has announced that it is available for pre-order, directly from Crucial's own store. The release date is set for May 30th.

In case you missed it earlier, the Crucial T700 PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD offers sequential performance of up to 12,400 MB/s for read and up to 11,800 MB/s for write (11,700 MB/s and 9,500 MB/s for the 1 TB version). Available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB capacities, and with or without the heatsink, the Crucial T700 uses Micron 232-layer TLC NAND paired up with Phison's E26 controller. The endurance rating (TBW) for the Crucial T700 SSD series is set at 600 TB for the 1 TB version, 1200 TB for the 2 TB version, and 2400 TB for the 4 TB version, and it is backed by a 5-year limited warranty.

Giga Computing, a subsidiary of GIGABYTE and an industry leader in high-performance servers, server motherboards, and workstations, today announced continued collaboration with GRAID Technology, and the creation of GIGABYTE R Series servers to overcome NVMe bottlenecks in storage applications. Online shopping, financial trading, editing high-resolution images, and AI-generated content have all become parts of everyday life. Enterprise companies are now developing better server solutions with faster compute speeds, greater energy efficiency, and more secure data protection. Giga Computing focuses on the design of computing hardware for GIGABYTE servers and works with GRAID Technology to develop integration solutions that disrupt the storage market. Together they have created next-generation servers and NVMe controllers that will become the new standards for RAID across NVMe SSDs.

Traditional RAID technologies have become a bottleneck for NVMe SSD performance, so GRAID developed the SupremeRAID high-speed RAID card which Giga Computing used to develop a comprehensive solution. The GIGABYTE R283-S92 server became the first server to support the SupremeRAID SR-1010 RAID card. In addition, all future GIGABYTE R283 and R183 servers will incorporate this optimization and become servers with the highest compatibility for GRAID's next-generation technologies. After installing SupremeRAID SR-1010, the user simply installs the corresponding driver and software on the operating system to activate the virtual controllers on the NVMe SSD, process storage and computing functions, and satisfy the ultra-high-performance requirements for all types of workloads.

ASUSTOR Inc. today launched two of its fastest NAS devices ever, the all-NVMe Flashstor 6 and Flashstor 12 Pro. The biggest feature of the Flashstor series NAS is that this is ASUSTOR's first dedicated PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe SSD NAS, which brings unmatched performance in a NAS device. The Flashstor 6 has six M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs and dual 2.5GbE for amazing performance while the Flashstor 12 Pro comes with twelve M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs combined with 10GbE for unmatched speed. Both Flashstor models are equipped with Intel's newest generation of 10 nm Quad-Core Intel Celeron N5105 that boosts up to 2.9 GHz. With 4 GB of energy-efficient DDR4 -2933 RAM that provides 40% more efficiency and dual USB 3.2 Gen 2x1, the Flashstor ensures that bottlenecks are a thing of the past.

The advantages of the Flashstor include, but are not limited to, are its low weight to be used as portable storage while efficiently cooled and quiet. The Flashstor series is specifically designed M.2 SSDs and the chassis makes it easy to add or remove SSDs by removing the chassis screws. The design of the Flashstor not only makes it look great in any environment, but also contains efficient hardware that ensures it can chew through virtually any storage or editing workload thrown at it while keeping hardware and SSDs cool. For extra cooling, the Flashstor comes with heatsinks to help more powerful SSDs to receive the cooling they need for optimal performance while remaining quiet at as low as 18.7 decibels. This ensures that content creation and consumption is enjoyed without interference.

EdgeCortix Inc., the innovative Edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) Platform company, focused on delivering class-leading compute efficiency and ultra-low latency for AI inference; announced, it is shipping its industry leading, energy-efficient, turn-key, AI co-processor, branded as the EdgeCortix SAKURA-I, to its global Early Access Program members.

"We are very pleased to be announcing the fulfillment of our first-generation semiconductor solution, the EdgeCortix SAKURA-I AI co-processor. Designed and engineered in Japan, SAKURA-I features up to 40 trillion operations per second (TOPs) of dedicated AI performance at sub-10 watts of power consumption.", said Sakyasingha Dasgupta, CEO and Founder of EdgeCortix, "We are delivering a complete Edge AI platform to our Early Access Program members, comprising both software and hardware solutions, which includes our recently updated MERA software suite. Program members include numerous global industry leading enterprise customers across both the commercial and defense sectors. We developed the EdgeCortix Early Access Program (EAP) with a focus on offering customers the opportunity to assess EdgeCortix's products and services at scale, by deploying them within their own complex, heterogeneous environments. The goal of the EAP offering is three-fold: showcasing the ease of integration into customer's existing heterogeneous systems, enabling customers to prove-out the effectiveness and efficiency of EdgeCortix solutions versus competing products and facilitating a direct dialog with EdgeCortix product management, enabling tailor-made fit in certain cases."

Sabrent USA was in a boastful mood yesterday, and proceeded to gloat on Twitter about an upcoming gargantuan storage solution: "At Sabrent, we run on the cutting edge of technology. Working with Apex, we received one of these new cards and currently running it through tests. We call this the Sabrent Apex X21 Destroyer. 21X 8 TB SSDs for 168 TB of storage on single card!" The company has revealed that it is collaborating with Apex Solutions on the single PCIe card offering, but the smattering of text and two photos uploaded to Twitter are just teaser material for the moment. There have been no reports of preview units getting sent to potential testers or hardware influencers. Sabrent and Apex will continue to tweak and evaluate.

The Destroyer is formed of already existing parts, namely Apex Solution's own x21 NVMe mounting platform card, and twenty-one of Sabrent's Rocket 4 Plus SSD 8 TB NVMe 4.0 Gen 4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD model (SB-RKT4P-8TB). A single Apex x21 card will set you back $2800, and the 8 TB Rocket 4 Plus SSD is currently discounted to $1099 (from $1499). That grand total comes to a whopping $25,879, and extra expenses are expected in the form of adequate cooling solutions and a hardware controller capable of managing that unruly gang of SSDs. Sabrent is expected to post updates about finalized fittings, features and exact pricing in the near future.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today launched new NVR Network Surveillance Servers - the QVP-85B with eight 3.5-inch SATA drive bays and Intel Core i5 6-core processor, and the QVP-63B with six 3.5-inch SATA drive bays and Intel Core i3 quad-core processor. The QVP-85B and QVP-63B run QVR Pro surveillance software supporting eight free IP camera channels. Offering an economic and high-performance software and hardware integrated video surveillance solution, the QVP-85B and QVP-63B fulfill requirements for secure, reliable and centrally-managed video surveillance storage for small businesses and offices.

"The QVP-85B and QVP-63B provide an easy-to-use UI for convenient surveillance management and is widely compatible with up to 95% of IP cameras on the market," said Andy Chuang, Product Manager of QNAP, adding "users can also take advantage of flexible licensing plans for expanding video channels and QVR Center for large-scale deployments based on needs."

Alphacool expands the portfolio of the Enterprise Solutions series for GPU water coolers and presents the new ES NV A100 80 GB PCIe, ES RTX A4000 with backplate and ES RTX 6000 Ada 48 GB.

To best dissipate the enormous waste heat of this GPU generation, the cooler is positioned close to the components to be cooled in an exemplary manner. The fin structure has been adapted and allows a very good water flow while increasing the cooling surface. The modified jetplate with improved inflow engine ensures optimal distribution of water on the cooling fins. The fully chromed copper base is resistant to acids, scratches and damages. The matte carbon finish gives the cooler a noble appearance. At the same time, this makes it interesting for private users who want to do without aRGB lighting.

Cervoz Technology, a leading supplier of industrial-grade storage and memory solutions, is excited to announce the new NVMe PCIe Gen 4x4 SSDs, the T441. Purposefully designed to cater to the growing automaticity trend of the industry, the T441 is the ideal choice for companies seeking cutting-edge technology in high-performance storage solutions.

Blazing Speeds with High Capacity
The Cervoz T441 SSDs leverage the power of 112-layer 3D TLC NAND flash technology, offering storage capacities of up to 3840 GB in a compact and energy-efficient design. In addition, the high-speed PCIe Gen 4x4 interface enables faster and more efficient data access, with Read/Write speeds of up to 7,100/6,190 MB/s and 4K random IOPS of up to 1,000K. This exceptional performance makes the T441 an ideal solution for applications requiring real-time processing of vast data, such as surveillance, machine vision, and edge AI, as well as those handling massive data sets like CAD, biomedical engineering, and atmospheric sciences.

For whatever reason, all of the AMD A620 chipset based motherboards that were announced on Friday, are not showing off the capabilities of the chipset and are in fact making it look worse than it is. AMD has no doubt limited the A620 platform, with some limitations that seem arbitrary, but the motherboards makers clearly haven't helped, as they've made the platform look very unattractive, when in fact it could be entirely acceptable, for a budget build. As you can see from AMD's feature matrix below, the company has removed a fair share of features compared to the B650 chipset, but for example, two 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports can be implemented. Despite this, only Biostar and Gigabyte have implemented one such port each, with ASUS, ASRock and MSI implementing zero.

Yes, the platform is limited to 65 W CPUs—assuming you want your CPUs boost behaviour to work as intended—which is likely to cause some issues, as it might not be clear to potential buyers that are looking for a cheap motherboard for their system and it's something AMD and its board partners need to communicate a lot better. However, the A620 platform has enough PCIe lanes for two M.2 drives and enough left for all the peripheral connectivity and some PCIe slots, yet most of the boards appear to shun a second M.2 slot for no apparent reason beyond the cost of the physical interface. It looks as if AMD's board partners have decided to try and cut back as much as they can in terms of features that we've ended up with boards that no sensible person should be buying, as the boards are barely fit for purpose. Time will tell if we'll see some better boards down the road, but it would appear that AMD's board partner would rather sell its potential customers a more expensive B650 board, based on the weak line-up of boards that launched on Friday.

Although NAND suppliers have continued to roll back production, there is still an oversupply of NAND Flash as demand for products such as servers, smartphones, and notebooks is still too weak. Therefore, TrendForce predicts that the ASP of NAND Flash will continue to fall in 2Q23, though that decline may shrink to 5~10%. The key to supply and demand returning to a market equilibrium lies in whether NAND suppliers can cut back on production even more. TrendForce believes if demand remains stable, then the ASP of NAND Flash will have an opportunity to rebound in 4Q23; if demand is weaker than expected, then ASP will take longer to recover.

Client SSD: Currently, PC OEM's have managed to liquidate most of their component inventory, and are now gearing up in preparation for mid-year sales events. Suppliers are cutting prices to clear out their inventories of PCIe Gen 3 SSDs, which are gradually being phased out. Meanwhile, prices of PCIe Gen 4 SSDs continue to face downward pressure due to a slow intake of new customer orders. The continuous decline of QLC products in 1Q23 has also dragged down the prices of TLC products, and there is relatively little room for prices to keep falling in 2Q23. While it still remains unclear whether or not demand will recover, TrendForce projects that the prices of PC client SSDs will drop 5~10% in 2Q23.

Tachyum announced today it has strengthened its presence in the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) organization that develops and supports the chiplet ecosystem and in-package innovations. The UCIe community fosters collaboration among leaders in semiconductors, packaging, IP suppliers, foundries, and cloud services.

UCIe 1.0 is an open specification guiding the interconnection between chiplets within a package to ensure communication and functionality. Chiplet-based design increases density and capability compared to standard printed circuit-boards (PCBs), and enables much smaller, lower-cost solutions that consume less power. UCIe specification addresses the die-to-die I/O physical layer, die-to-die protocols, and software stack currently served by PCI Express (PCIe) and Compute Express Link (CXL) industry standards. UCIe ultimately extends the PCIe standard to in-package interconnects and allows the potential to bring CXL into in-package integration.

Today at the Amplify Partner Conference, HP Inc announced its latest line-up of gaming hardware and software designed to bring gamers everything they need to enjoy the games they love. The new OMEN Transcend 16 Laptop, OMEN 16 Laptop, Victus 16 Laptop, and a vast range of stunning OMEN monitors offer casual, hobbyist, lifestyle, and hardcore gamers the power and flexibility to play and work hard. To bring everything together, new enhancements in OMEN Gaming Hub offer a variety of performance and personalization features.

People everywhere seek devices that can adapt to hybrid play and work. Sixty-two percent of gamers prefer a PC that fits their entire life instead of being used for gaming only. With a billion new gamers entering the space in the last seven years and 84 percent of them using games to connect with others with similar interests, gaming devices enable access to countless games and corresponding communities.

SMART Modular Technologies, Inc. ("SMART"), a division of SGH and a global leader in memory solutions, solid-state drives and hybrid storage products announces the introduction of its new T6CN family of PCIe NVMe SSD products which is part of the SMART RUGGED portfolio. T6CN SSDs are designed to fit between very high-performance datacenter SSDs and highly secure, ruggedized SSDs for military, industrial, and telecom applications. Competitively priced, the T6CN is available in M.2 2280, E1.S and U.2 form factors. All of which provide compatibility with PCIe Gen 4.0 NVMe technology, delivering faster read, write, data transfer and operating speeds compared to current SSD technology.

The SSDs capacity ranges from 960 GB to 3,840 GB for the M.2, 960 GB to 7680 GB for the E1.S, and 960 GB to 16,360 GB for the U.2 version. T6CN offers speeds up to 3,500/s Sequential Read and 3,200 MB/s Sequential Writes and is compliant with NVMe v1.4 specifications. Gen 4.0 based technology runs exponentially faster than the speed of SATA III.

NVIDIA's H100 accelerator is one of the most powerful solutions for powering AI workloads. And, of course, every company and government wants to use it to power its AI workload. However, in countries like China, shipment of US-made goods is challenging. With export regulations in place, NVIDIA had to get creative and make a specific version of its H100 GPU for the Chinese market, labeled the H800 model. Late last year, NVIDIA also created a China-specific version of the A100 model called A800, with the only difference being the chip-to-chip interconnect bandwidth being dropped from 600 GB/s to 400 GB/s.

This year's H800 SKU also features similar restrictions, and the company appears to have made similar sacrifices for shipping its chips to China. From the 600 GB/s bandwidth of the regular H100 PCIe model, the H800 is gutted to only 300 GB/s of bi-directional chip-to-chip interconnect bandwidth speed. While we have no data if the CUDA or Tensor core count has been adjusted, the sacrifice of bandwidth to comply with export regulations will have consequences. As the communication speed is reduced, training large models will increase the latency and slow the workload compared to the regular H100 chip. This is due to the massive data size that needs to travel from one chip to another. According to Reuters, an NVIDIA spokesperson declined to discuss other differences, stating that "our 800 series products are fully compliant with export control regulations."

The leading global motherboard, graphics card, Mini PC and gaming monitor manufacturer, ASRock, proudly announces a new Mini PC—DeskMini 4205. The DeskMini 4205 is first fanless DeskMini model which powered by Intel Celeron Processor 4205U. Its fanless design is both energy efficient and silent to suit the applications of industry. This Mini PC features dual LAN ports, three displays and four-storage support.

DeskMini 4205 supports up to three video outputs at the same time, so it's perfect for digital signage and advertising. With DisplayPort 1.2 port, users can enjoy high quality media entertainment at home. For storage, DeskMini 4205 provides two M.2 2280 PCIe slots and two 2.5" SATA 6 Gbps interface to build mini data center with ease. Dual LAN ports enable users to separate networks or connect to different LAN devices. In addition, DeskMini 4205 offers the optional model with two COM ports for a wide range of business usage. This design makes DeskMini 4205 ideal for use in the bar code scanner, amplifier, projector, access controller and PTZ camera to meet commercial project's needs.

NVIDIA has killed SLI on its graphics cards, disabling the possibility of connecting two or more GPUs to harness their power for gaming and other workloads. However, SLI is making a reincarnation today in the form of a new H100 GPU model that spots higher memory capacity and higher performance. Called the H100 NVL, the GPU is a unique edition design based on the regular H100 PCIe version. What makes the H100 HVL version so special is the boost in memory capacity, now up from 80 GB in the standard model to 94 GB in the NVL edition SKU, for a total of 188 GB of HMB3 memory, running on a 6144-bit bus. Being a special edition SKU, it is sold only in pairs, as these H100 NVL GPUs are paired together and are connected by three NVLink connectors on top. Installation requires two PCIe slots, separated by dual-slot spacing.

The performance differences between the H100 PCIe version and the H100 SXM version are now matched with the new H100 NVL, as the card features a boost in the TDP with up to 400 Watts per card, which is configurable. The H100 NVL uses the same Tensor and CUDA core configuration as the SXM edition, except it is placed on a PCIe slot and connected to another card. Being sold in pairs, OEMs can outfit their systems with either two or four pairs per certified system. You can see the specification table below, with information filled out by AnandTech. As NVIDIA says, the need for this special edition SKU is the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) that require significant computational power to run. "Servers equipped with H100 NVL GPUs increase GPT-175B model performance up to 12X over NVIDIA DGX A100 systems while maintaining low latency in power-constrained data center environments," noted the company.

Simply NUC, Inc, a leading mini PC solutions company, announced they are taking orders for their brand-new Topaz 3 NUC. As the successor to Topaz 2, Topaz 3 features Intel's latest 13th Gen Raptor Lake processors to provide the most crisp mini PC computing experience to date. From home theater to office to digital signage kiosks, Topaz 3 is designed to be used across many different computing applications.

Starting at $669, two Topaz 3 models (NUC13TZi7 and NUC13TZi5) are now available to preorder from Simply NUC across their global sites. The NUC13TZi7 model based on the Intel Core i7-1360P processor is intended for usage where higher computing performance is needed. To accommodate a variety of price points, more cost-effective options are also available with the NUC13TZi5 model based on the Intel Core i5-1340P processor and the NUC13TZi3 model, which will ship later in Q2, based on the Intel Core i3-1315U processor. Core i7 and i5 units are expected to begin shipping in April.

ADLINK Technology Inc., a global leader in edge computing, a global supplier of industrial PCs and motherboards, and a Titanium member of the Intel Partner Alliance, announces the launch of the new IMB-M47H industrial ATX motherboard for 12th/13th Gen Intel Core i9/i7/i5/i3, Pentium and Celeron processors. The IMB-M47H ATX motherboard delivers scalable, high-performance computing power and supports three simultaneous independent displays, external USB, 2.5GbE, and high-performance add-on cards for complex processing tasks in smart manufacturing, 5G manufacturing, semiconductor, and machine vision applications.

The IMB-M47H industrial ATX motherboard supports Gen 12 Intel processors and importantly the latest Intel Core processors that utilize a high-performance hybrid architecture with up to eight E-cores (Efficient-cores) for multi-threaded background task management and multitasking, and up to eight P-cores (Performance-cores) for demanding single-threaded work such as graphics and video rendering. The 12th/13th Gen Intel Core processors boost single-thread performance by 1.36x and multi-thread performance by 1.35x compared to 10th Gen Intel Core processors delivering more power-efficient general-purpose processing and offering powerful processing for intensive operations.

Today, thanks to Yuuki_Ans on the Chinese Bilibili forum, we have more information about the upcoming "Avenue City" platform that powers Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest. Intel's forthcoming Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest Xeon processors will diverge the Xeon family into two offerings: one optimized for performance/core equipped with P-cores and the other for power/core equipped with E-cores. The reference platform Intel designs and shares with OEMs internally is a 16.7" x 20" board with 20 PCB layers, made as a dual-socket solution. Featuring two massive LGA-7529 sockets, the reference design shows the basic layout for a server powered by these new Xeons.

Capable of powering Granite Rapids / Sierra Forest-AP processors of up to 500 Watts, the platform also accommodates next-generation I/O. Featuring 24 DDR5 DIMMs with support for 12-channel memory, with memory speeds of up to 6400 MT/s. The PCIe selection includes six PCIe Gen 5 x16 links supporting CXL cache coherent protocol and 6x24 UPI links. Additionally, we have another piece of information that Granite Rapids will come with up to 128 cores and 256 threads in both regular and HBM-powered Xeon Max flavoring. You can see storage and reference platform configuration details on the slides below.