Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today announced the world's first integrated 5G IoT processors that are designed to support four major operating systems, in addition to two new robotics platforms, and an accelerator program for IoT ecosystem partners. These new innovations will empower manufacturers participating in the rapidly expanding world of devices at the connected intelligent edge.

The need for connected, intelligent, and autonomous devices is growing rapidly, and it is expected to hit $116 billion by 2030 according to Precedence Research. Businesses attempting to compete in this fast-moving economy need a reliable source of control and connectivity technology for their IoT and robotic devices. Qualcomm Technologies, which has shipped over 350 million dedicated IoT chipsets, is uniquely capable of providing manufacturers with the platforms needed to address this expanding segment.

Phison Electronics, a global leader in NAND flash and storage solutions, announced today the launch of IMAGIN+, an upgraded platform offering R&D resource sharing and ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) design services for NAND flash controllers, storage solutions, PMIC, and Redrivers/Retimers. The introduction of IMAGIN+ comes during the Embedded World Exhibition & Conference (March 14-16) in Nuremberg, a premier global event for the embedded community.

Phison's rejuvenated platform, bolstered by more than two decades of research and development expertise, empowers global partners and customers to create not just ASIC chips and NAND flash storage solutions but also to participate in the growth of a thriving ecosystem of emerging technologies. Phison understands that success in today's fast-paced market requires more than just providing NAND storage solutions; it requires the ability to influence and shape the industry through signal integrity and power management ICs, Compute Express Link and other value-added offerings.

Apex Storage, a new company in the storage world, has announced that its X21 add-in-card (AIC) has room for 21 (you read that right) PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSDs. The card supports up to 168 TBs with 8 TB M.2 NVMe SSDs and 336 TBs of storage with future 16 TB M.2 SSDs drives and can withstand speeds of up to 30.5 GB/s. Packed inside a single-slot, full-length, full-height AIC, the X21 card is built for a snug fit inside workstations and applications such as machine learning and hyper-converged infrastructure that enterprises need to develop inside servers and workstations across the site.

The X21 AIC has 100 PCIe lanes on the board, which indicates the presence of a PCIe switch, likely placed under the heatsink. To power all the storage, the PCIe slot itself needs to be more, and the card also has two 6-pin PCIe power connectors that provide 225 Watts of power in total. Interestingly, the heatsink is passively cooled, but Apex Storage suggests that there should be an active airflow with a minimum of 400 LFM to ensure the regular operation of the card. In the example application, the company laid out X21 with Samsung's 990 Pro SSDs; however, the card also supports Intel Optane drives. Read and Write IOPS are higher than 10 million. Additionally, the average read and write access latencies are 79 ms and 52 ms. Apex Storage didn't reveal the pricing and availability of the card; however, expect it to come with a premium.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation, a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid-state storage devices, today announced it will be exhibiting at the upcoming Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany from the 14th to 16th March and will be showcasing their high-performance PCIe NVMe Gen 4 single-chip SSD solution, automotive controller as well as an array of PCIe NVMe Gen 4 SSD controller solutions for personal computers, industrial/embedded and automotive applications.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is announcing the latest addition to its revolutionary ultra-high performance, high-density petascale class all-flash NVMe server family. Supermicro systems in this high performance storage product family will support the next-generation EDSFF form factor, including the E3.S and E1.S devices, in form factors that accommodate 16- and 32 high-performance PCIe Gen 5 NVMe drive bays.

The initial offering of the updated product line will support up to one-half of a petabyte storage space in a 1U 16 bay rackmount system, followed by a fully petabyte storage space in 2U 32 bay rackmount system for both Intel and AMD PCIe Gen 5 platforms.

Looking back at 2H22, as server OEMs slowed down the momentum of their product shipments, Chinese server buyers also held a conservative outlook on future demand and focused on inventory reduction. Thus, the flow of orders for enterprise SSDs remained sluggish. However, NAND Flash suppliers had to step up shipments of enterprise SSDs during 2H22 because the demand for storage components equipped in notebook (laptop) computers and smartphones had undergone very large downward corrections. Compared with other categories of NAND Flash products, enterprise SSDs represented the only significant source of bit consumption. Ultimately, due to the imbalance between supply and demand, the QoQ decline in prices of enterprise SSDs widened to 25% for 4Q22. This price plunge, in turn, caused the quarterly total revenue from enterprise SSDs to drop by 27.4% QoQ to around US$3.79 billion. TrendForce projects that the NAND Flash industry will again post a QoQ decline in the revenue from this product category for 1Q23.

Today at MWC 2023, Lenovo unveiled its latest PC and Chromebook solutions to help embrace dispersed hybrid working styles and provide advanced features that empower users across a broad selection of requirements and needs. Encompassing a progressive and contemporary design philosophy, the latest PC solutions, including a comprehensive refresh across the ThinkPad portfolio, focus on improvements in system performance, increased use of more sustainable materials, and continued enhancements to user experience. ThinkPad Z13 and Z16 second generation Windows 11 laptops enhance key areas of hardware and software functionality to help users maintain a creative edge. ThinkPad Z13 also presents a new Flax Fiber top cover, using bio-based materials, for a unique individual look and feel. Lenovo also introduced a redesigned fourth generation ThinkPad X13 and X13 Yoga with narrower bezels, new colors, materials and features to facilitate hybrid work and mobility. The ThinkPad portfolio for 2023 is completed with fourth generation ThinkPad T14s, T14 and second generation T16 workhorse laptops along with the fourth generation ThinkPad L13, L13 Yoga, L14 and L15, designed for businesses with a wide range of mobile computing needs.

Value-conscious businesses seeking focused productivity features can select a fifth generation ThinkPad E14 with new 16:10 displays or a new 16-inch form factor in the ThinkPad E16. Frequent travellers will like the additional protection provided by the new ThinkPad Professional Sleeve, available in 13-inch and 14-inch sizes to support a broad selection of laptops. The highly versatile ThinkCentre Tiny-in-One Gen 5 Monitor offers improved audio-visual capabilities and redesigned features capable of supporting multiple work scenarios. Finally, consumers can enjoy the flexibility offered by the latest IdeaPad Duet 3i, a Windows 11 detachable laptop that seamlessly transitions between clamshell and tablet modes; or relish the ChromeOS eco-system with the latest IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook featuring a range of audio, visual, and connectivity upgrades.

Magewell has unveiled a new model in its Eco Capture family of ultra-compact, power-efficient, M.2 video capture cards. The new single-channel Eco Capture AIO M.2 provides both HDMI and SDI interfaces with embedded audio support for flexible input connectivity. Magewell will highlight the Eco Capture AIO M.2 and other new innovations in booth C5031 at the 2023 NAB Show in Las Vegas from April 16 to 19.

Magewell's Eco Capture cards offer systems integrators and OEM developers a high-performance video capture solution with low power consumption in a space-efficient form factor. The cost-effective, low-latency devices feature a high-speed PCIe 2.0 bus interface with an M.2 connector and measure just 22x80mm (0.87x3.15 in), making them ideal for incorporation into small, portable or embedded systems where full-sized PCIe slots are not available.

It looks like Gigabyte might be the first company to offer a PCIe 5.0 SSD for sale to major markets outside of Japan, since no other brand appears to have launched such a product at the time of this news post. The Aorus Gen5 10000 was launched around two weeks ago, but is currently listed as being on backorder at both Newegg and Amazon in the US. Currently only the 2 TB version is listed and it's coming in at about the same cost as two equivalent PCIe 4.0 drives.

We're not sure if the backorder price of US$339.99 on Newegg is the actual retail price, but considering a 2 TB version of WD's Black SN850X costs US$159.99, it doesn't seems like the very slight performance increase the Aorus Gen5 10000 will bring to the table is going to be worth the asking price. Then again, Gigabyte's SSDs are overpriced on Newegg compared to competing products and the Aorus Gen4 7000s Premium, which features the same heatsink as the Aorus Gen5 10000, retails for US$281.99 on Newegg. Amazon didn't list any pricing as yet.

Intel today announced the new Intel Xeon W-3400 and Intel Xeon W-2400 desktop workstation processors (code-named Sapphire Rapids), led by the Intel Xeon w9-3495X, Intel's most powerful desktop workstation processor ever designed. Built for professional creators, these new Xeon processors provide massive performance for media and entertainment, engineering and data science professionals. With a breakthrough new compute architecture, faster cores and new embedded multi-die interconnect bridge (EMIB) packaging, the Xeon W-3400 and Xeon W-2400 series of processors enable unprecedented scalability for increased performance.

"For more than 20 years, Intel has been committed to delivering the highest quality workstation platforms - combining high-performance compute and rock-solid stability - for professional PC users across the globe. Our new Intel Xeon desktop workstation platform is uniquely designed to unleash the innovation and creativity of professional creators, artists, engineers, designers, data scientists and power users - built to tackle both today's most demanding workloads as well as the professional workloads of the future." -Roger Chandler, Intel vice president and general manager, Creator and Workstation Solutions, Client Computing Group

Getac has today announced the expansion of its flagship X600 rugged mobile workstation range with the launch of the X600 Server and X600 Pro-PCI. The new models will sit alongside the recently launched X600 and X600 Pro, creating a comprehensive lineup of rugged mobile workstations that are purpose-built to meet the demands of professionals working in challenging industries, such as defence, manufacturing and oil & gas.

X600 Server: The fully rugged mobile server
The all-new Getac X600 Server delivers a powerful commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) rugged mobile server that can be folded to a slim profile for easy transportation.

One of the major issues with M.2 based NVMe SSDs today is the excessive heat they output, part of the reason most of them run so hot is because of the older fabrication node they're made on. Most current PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD controllers are built on a 12 nm node of some kind, but based on data out of IT Home in the PRC, we now have details of Silicon Motion's SM2504XT PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD controller, which appears to be one of the first, if not the first, to be made on a 7 nm node.

Although it's not mentioned specifically who Silicon Motion's manufacturing partner is, it's most likely going to be TSMC, as Silicon Motion is a Taiwanese company. The SM2504XT will be a mainstream 4-channel controller, but it'll support NAND flash rated at up to 3600 MT/s, which is a step up from any other currently announced NVMe SSD controller. It also supports the NVMe 2.0 protocol and will have a PCIe 5.0 x4 host system interface. The new controller is expected to have hit the engineering sample stage some time in September this year.

AMD's high-end X670E motherboard chipset combines two Promontory 21 chips working together to deliver a single solution. With regularly-sized ATX motherboards, having two chips to form a chipset is fine, as there is much room on the PCB. However, with Mini-ITX motherboards, packing two Promontory 21 chips is difficult as the PCB area is limited. To combat this, ASUS introduced an interesting solution to solve the problem and allowed the company to ship the high-end X670E chipset inside a Mini-ITX form factor. Thanks to UNIKO's Hardware's findings, we look at the exciting solution ASUS used to solve this problem.

Instead of two Promontory 21 chips side by side, one is placed on the motherboard directly, while the other stands vertically attached by M.2 PCIe slot. Below, the chipset's pictures and the highlight show how it looks disassembled.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion" or the "Company") today announced its financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2022. For the fourth quarter of 2022, net sales (GAAP) decreased sequentially to $200.8 million from $250.8 million in the third quarter of 2022. Net income (GAAP) decreased to $23.5 million, or $0.71 per diluted American Depositary Share ("ADS") (GAAP), from net income (GAAP) of $42.9 million, or $1.29 per diluted ADS (GAAP), in the third quarter of 2022.

For the fourth quarter of 2022, net income (non-GAAP) decreased to $41.1 million, or $1.22 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), from net income (non-GAAP) of $51.2 million, or $1.53 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), in the third quarter of 2022.

Although we haven't been able to confirm these specs, full specifications of AMD's upcoming A620 chipset was posted on Twitter by @g01d3nm4ng0, who has proven to have solid details in the past. This is supposedly the cut-down version of the B650 chipset, due to the rumored delays of the actual A620 chipset. The A620 chipset will be identical to the B650 chipset when it comes to PCIe lane counts, but rather than PCIe 4.0 lanes, the chipset will only offer PCIe 3.0 lanes. What is unclear is if the PCIe 3.0 of the B650 chipset will remain or not, as they're not included in the leaked specs.

If not, then the A620 chipset will only have a total of eight usable PCIe lanes, but four lanes that are connected to the CPU, which will apparently also be limited to PCIe 3.0 speeds. There's also no mention of SATA port configurations. AMD has trimmed the amount of USB 3.x ports significantly, with the A620 chipset only getting two 10 Gbps and two 5 Gbps ports. USB 2.0 ports remain the same at a total of six. A620 motherboards will apparently also be limited to PCIe 4.0 for the lanes from the CPU, but this should be less of an issue for most consumers. As rumored, CPU overclocking is also said to be missing, but RAM overclocking will still be present.

ASUS today announced the 15.6-inch Vivobook Go 15 OLED (E1504F) and 14-inch Vivobook Go 14 (E1404F), two exciting and affordable lifestyle laptops that help make users productive or keep them entertained, wherever they go. These light and compact laptops feature superior OLED (E1504F) or IPS (E1404F) displays and powerful ASUS SonicMaster sound systems with DTS Audio Processing for immersive entertainment. The design is stylish and practical, with thoughtful touches that make the user's life easier, such as a 180° lay-flat hinge. Built to survive any lifestyle, these tough laptops are US military-grade tested for durability using the world's strictest test regime.

Speedy performance for any task is assured by up to AMD Ryzen 5 7000-series processors, 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM and a 512 GB PCIe SSD. Other user-friendly features include an ASUS ErgoSense keyboard; smart conferencing via the HD webcam with ASUS 3D Noise Reduction (3DNR), AI noise cancelation, and a physical privacy shield; and a useful suite of ASUS apps including MyASUS, GlideX and ScreenXpert 3.

SUS IoT, the global AIoT solution provider, today announced PE3000G—the industry's first edge AI system to support Mobile PCI Express Module (MXM) GPUs from both NVIDIA and Intel. Specifically, the all-new industrial PC works seamlessly with NVIDIA Ampere/Turing or Intel Arc A-series MXM GPUs. Powered by a 12th Gen Intel Core processor and up to 64 GB of DDR5 4800 MHz memory, and combining a proven power design, guaranteed and fanless thermal performance, and superior physical and mechanical ruggedness, PE3000G brings unprecedented longevity, computing power, flexibility and reliability to AI computing at the edge—making it an ideal option for scenarios where resilience, longevity and both CPU and GPU scalability are paramount.

"PE3000G is ASUS IoT's response to the burgeoning demand for accelerating AI inference and extreme deployment in industrial settings," commented KuoWei Chao, General Manager of the ASUS IoT business unit. "With robust power, thermal and mechanical design, it pushes versatile edge-AI-inference applications to business-critical applications. PE3000G is an ideal fit to accelerate edge AI inference in SWaP-constrained applications, such as machine vision in factory automation, outdoor surveillance system and AI-inference systems for autonomous vehicles."

AMD's entry-level A620 chipset for Socket AM5 motherboards is nearing launch, as manufacturers such as GIGABYTE and ASUS have started regulatory filing their upcoming products with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC). These would hopefully bring the starting prices of AM5 motherboards down to the USD $125 figure AMD promised. AMD will sufficiently differentiate A620 from the B650, using specs such as the lack of CPU overclocking capabilities, only a handful PCIe Gen 3 downstream lanes, and the lack of PCIe Gen 5 on both the PEG and CPU-attached M.2 slots (which could at least be limited to Gen 4 if not Gen 3).

While the motherboards themselves may be cheap, the overall platform costs may still end up higher than Intel's H610 or upcoming H710 chipsets; as Socket AM5 lacks DDR4 memory support, and even at the entry-level you'll be forced to buy DDR5. That said, what A620 promises is platform longevity, that the platform will support future processor generations that launch even beyond 2025. AMD dropped a major hint on A620 chipset motherboards availability in its 2023 CES Keynote address, when it pointed to "65 W CPUs and entry-level motherboards" alongside each other. The 65 W Ryzen 7000 series processors are already out, which means A620 should be just around the corner. February 2023 is when AMD looks to launch its high-end Ryzen 7000X3D processors.

Synology today announced the new 2-bay Synology DiskStation DS723+, the smallest expandable option in its lineup of all-in-one solutions for home offices and small businesses. Powered by the versatile Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system, the DS723+ offers comprehensive solutions to protect and manage business data, easily collaborate on documents, access files remotely, and monitor physical assets, all within a compact desktop format.

"This new unit delivers impressive performance and capability for its size," said Michael Wang, Product Manager at Synology. "With its extremely compact form factor, it will certainly appeal to those that have smaller storage requirements but don't want to give up on the convenience of centralized storage and the possibility to scale in the future."

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today launched new high-performance TVS-h874 QuTS hero NAS models that incorporate 12th Gen Intel Core i9 sixteen-core, i7 twelve-core multi-thread processors with Intel Core Hybrid Technology for optimal computing performance and smooth multiple virtual machine (VM) operation. Integrating the reliable ZFS-based operating system, PCIe Gen 4 expandability, M.2 NVMe SSD caching, and 2.5GbE/10GbE connectivity, the TVS-h874 assists businesses in building high-performance storage environments for hosting multiple VM, application servers, and running business data backup/restore applications.

"The new TVS-h874 models adopt Intel Core Hybrid Technology, combining Performance-cores and Efficient-cores," said Andy Chuang, Product Manager of QNAP, adding "The Performance Hybrid Architecture intelligently allocates CPU cores to different tasks, thus increasing the performance of the new TVS-h874 models by 3.55 times compared with previous models."

TYAN, an industry-leading server platform design manufacturer and a MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation subsidiary, today introduced 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor-based server platforms highlighting built-in accelerators to improve performance across the fastest-growing workloads in AI, analytics, cloud, storage, and HPC.

"Greater availability of new technology like 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors continue to drive the changes in the business landscape", said Danny Hsu, Vice President of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation's Server Infrastructure Business Unit. "The advances in TYAN's new portfolio of server platforms with features such as DDR5, PCIe 5.0 and Compute Express Link 1.1 are bringing high levels of compute power within reach from smaller organizations to data centers."

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions today announced the evolutionary AORUS Gen4 7300 SSD, which is the upgraded PCIe 4.0 SSD with read speed up to 7300 MB/s. Enhanced by the select PCIe 4.0 controller with advanced 3D-TLC NAND Flash, it provides superior performance than the previous generation PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. AORUS Gen4 7300 SSD with M.2 2280 interface comes in two capacity variants of 2 TB and 1 TB, along with a unique packaging design of separated SSD and heatsink packing to offer more flexible thermal solutions. Meanwhile, the GIGABYTE exclusive GCC software management platform provides the instant overview and adjustment of SSD status for a cool storage operation with high performance.

AORUS Gen4 7300 SSD equips the select Phison E18 8-channel controller, which provides users with ultimate random access rate, as well as the high-speed 3D-TLC NAND Flash and SLC cache design that brings the PCIe 4.0 into full play. Under the real test, AORUS Gen4 7300 SSD can reach a read speed up to 7300 MB/s and a write speed up to 6850 MB/s, which is faster than the previous gen. PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, two times faster than PCIe 3.0 SSD, and up to 13 times faster than SATA SSD. Enhanced by the multi-core architecture of the E18 controller, AORUS Gen4 7300 SSD not only improves AI multitasking to lessen the bottleneck of system performance, but powers up content creators, gamers, and users eager for extreme performance.

During its CES 2023 keynote, AMD announced its latest Instinct MI300 APU, a first of its kind in the data center world. Combining the CPU, GPU, and memory elements into a single package eliminates latency imposed by long travel distances of data from CPU to memory and from CPU to GPU throughout the PCIe connector. In addition to solving some latency issues, less power is needed to move the data and provide greater efficiency. The Instinct MI300 features 24 Zen4 cores with simultaneous multi-threading enabled, CDNA3 GPU IP, and 128 GB of HBM3 memory on a single package. The memory bus is 8192-bit wide, providing unified memory access for CPU and GPU cores. CLX 3.0 is also supported, making cache-coherent interconnecting a reality.

The Instinct MI300 APU package is an engineering marvel of its own, with advanced chiplet techniques used. AMD managed to do 3D stacking and has nine 5 nm logic chiplets that are 3D stacked on top of four 6 nm chiplets with HBM surrounding it. All of this makes the transistor count go up to 146 billion, representing the sheer complexity of a such design. For performance figures, AMD provided a comparison to Instinct MI250X GPU. In raw AI performance, the MI300 features an 8x improvement over MI250X, while the performance-per-watt is "reduced" to a 5x increase. While we do not know what benchmark applications were used, there is a probability that some standard benchmarks like MLPerf were used. For availability, AMD targets the end of 2023, when the "El Capitan" exascale supercomputer will arrive using these Instinct MI300 APU accelerators. Pricing is unknown and will be unveiled to enterprise customers first around launch.

Ahead of CES 2023, MediaTek today announced the latest chipset in the Genio platform for IoT devices, the octa-core Genio 700 designed for smart home, smart retail, and industrial IoT products. The new chipset will be featured as part of a demo at MediaTek's booth at CES 2023. With a focus on power efficiency, the MediaTek Genio 700 is a N6 (6 nm) IoT chipset that boasts two ARM A78 cores running at 2.2 GHz and six ARM A55 cores at 2.0 GHz while providing 4.0 TOPs AI accelerator. It comes with support for FHD 60p + 4K 60p display, as well as an ISP for better images.

"When we launched the Genio family of IoT products last year, we designed the platform with the scalability and development support that brands need, paving the way for opportunities to continue expanding," said Richard Lu, Vice President of MediaTek IoT Business Unit. "With a focus on industrial and smart home products, the Genio 700 is a perfect natural addition to the lineup to ensure we can provide the widest range of support possible to our customers."

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it will showcase a number of its core and brand-new products at the CES 2023, the most influential tech event in the world taking place in Las Vegas from Jan. 5th through Jan. 8th. The products, introduced under the theme of the "Green Digital Solution," as part of the SK Group's "Carbon-Free Future" campaign, are expected to attract Big Tech customers and experts given the significant improvement in performance and energy efficiency compared with the previous generation as well as the effect of lessening the impact on the environment.

Attention on energy-efficient memory chips has been on the rise as global tech companies pursue products that process data faster, while consuming less energy. SK hynix is confident that its products to be displayed at the CES 2023 will meet customers' such needs with outstanding performance per watt and performance. The core product put forward at the show is PS1010 E3.S, an eSSD product composed of multiple 176-layer 4D NAND that supports the fifth generation of the PCIe interface.