Super Micro Computer, Inc., a global leader in high-performance, high-efficiency server technology and green computing unveils its new generation server platforms supporting the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600/1600 families at CeBIT 2012 in Hannover, Germany this week. This comprehensive product launch showcases the vast array of systems, serverboards and computing solutions Supermicro has deployed delivering higher performance with Intel's newest 8 core, 16 thread processors.

Debuting alongside this launch are innovative, free-air cooled systems designed to withstand 47 C operating temperature environments that make it easier to achieve a better PUE (e.g., 1.05). In addition, Supermicro has created a new platform architecture dubbed "FatTwin", an evolution of Supermicro's Twin architecture, offering enhanced system cooling, power savings, lower TCO and ultimate flexibility to support any application or upgrade path. Major advances in high-efficiency (95%) Digital Switching power supplies and integrated UPS battery backup module technologies provide increased efficiency and high-availability for mission critical applications. When combined with full rack integration services and new Data Center Management software that manages health, power and maintenance of servers in large deployments, Supermicro provides the most complete, scalable computing solutions with maximized performance and the highest levels of efficiency.

Dell today announced a portfolio of blade, rack and tower PowerEdge servers optimized for use in demanding enterprise environments. As the only one of the top five server vendors to grow server revenues in Q4 2011 with 9.7 percent year-over-year revenue growth, Dell continues to innovate to deliver features that are industry firsts and make the PowerEdge 12th generation servers the company's highest performing, most manageable servers ever. With this new server series, customers ranging from small businesses to hyper-scale data centers can help maximize efficiency by streamlining and automating operations, help achieve better business application performance and business continuity.

"Dell designed the new PowerEdge servers with input gathered from more than 7,700 customer interactions in 17 countries across four continents," said Brad Anderson, President of Enterprise Solutions Group at Dell. "Our customers told us that they need end-to-end solutions to handle the complex workload problems they face every day. As such, we built our new generation of servers, systems management and workload solutions to address the needs of business end users who require maximum performance to run mission-critical applications and IT departments which demand more efficient, secure and reliable operations."

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., today announced that it will expand its family of blade and rack server products for the enterprise market. The forthcoming Hitachi Compute Systems will be based on the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family introduced today by Intel Corporation.

"By leveraging the new Intel Xeon processor E5 family, upcoming Hitachi Compute Systems will feature faster performance, higher density and greater energy efficiency," said Roberto Basilio, vice president, Infrastructure Platforms Product Management, Hitachi Data Systems. "Hitachi Compute Systems offer innovative designs with unique advantages in scalability, flexible I/O configuration and high availability. They are ideal servers upon which to build converged data center solutions. Seamless management integration with Hitachi Data Systems storage and data networking components give customers an easy operational interface. This saves costs, reduces errors and allows faster, more effective deployment and management of virtual IT environments - all of which create greater efficiencies across the data center."

Addressing the incredible growth of data traffic in the cloud, Intel Corporation announced the record-breaking Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family. These new processors deliver leadership performance, best data center performance per watt1,4, breakthrough I/O innovation and trusted hardware security features to enable IT to scale. These processors are not only at the heart of servers and workstations, but will also power the next generation of storage and communication systems from leading vendors around the world.

Forecasts call for 15 billion connected devices and over 3 billion connected users by 2015. The amount of global data center IP traffic is forecasted to grow by 33 percent annually through 2015, surpassing 4.8 zetabytes per year, more than 3 times the amount in 2011. At these levels, each connected user will generate more than 4 GB of data traffic every day - the equivalent of a 4-hour HD movie. This will increase the amount of data that needs to be stored by almost 50 percent per year. In order to scale to meet this growth, the worldwide number of cloud servers is expected to more than triple by 2015.

In line with a solid strategy for commercial products, Acer has advanced its server line with a whole new line up of refreshed server products. This time around, Acer has not only updated the specifications to support the latest Intel Xeon processors E5 family, but has expanded its business portfolio and management tools to provide greater flexibility in modern datacenters.

Greater performance and expandability

The new product designs feature Intel's latest line up of Intel Xeon processor E5 family of CPUs, which give up to two times the performance for certain benchmarks, and up to 8 cores per CPU. The F2 generation, also provides greater expandability and more robust specifications built into every platform. Hardware-aside, the F2 generation will improve on operating system support to include mainstream and open source platforms, and its management tools are enhanced to improve IT ease of use.

RAID Incorporated, an end-to-end customized solutions provider in HPC, Big Data, and virtualized environments, today announces its new range of FusionAMD server solutions based on AMD Opteron 6000 Series Processors and DDR3 memory support.

Optimized for 16/12/8-Core AMD Opteron Processors, this latest comprehensive line of solutions offers unrivaled levels of performance and flexibility. The solutions boost I/O performance with PCI-Express 2.0 to double throughput, increase performance and reduce power with DDR3 memory, and also reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) with high levels of integration and energy-efficient components.

Western Digital, the world's leader in digital storage solutions, has announced that it is offering to customers of its WD Sentinel DX4000 storage server an offsite data storage service that improves data protection for the small business owners who rely on WD Sentinel to protect their precious business information. WD partnered with KeepVault, which was recently added to the AuthenTec line of services, to serve WD's Sentinel small office storage server customers.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced test results for servers utilizing the world's first 20 nanometer (nm) class Green Memory that were conducted at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Munich. A system based on Samsung's 20 nm-class DDR3 memory and solid state drives (SSDs) together with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V proved to be twice as fast as current memory configurations for servers setting up virtual machine instances and recovering data in private cloud environments. These advanced configurations also consumed as much as 50 percent less power per server.

IBM today announced the opening of the first-ever server remanufacturing center in China. The new center, located in Shenzhen, will help reduce the impact of e-waste on the environment by extending the life of older IT equipment that otherwise would go into landfills. IBM will also buy back select IBM Power Systems from clients as they upgrade to new IBM equipment.

The new facility expands IBM's global remanufacturing and refurbishment operations in Australia, Singapore, Japan, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany and the United States. The Shenzhen facility will initially remanufacture hundreds of mid-range IBM Power Systems, which are reconditioned, tested and certified using rigorous processes and original manufacturing standards, or rebuilt to meet specific customer requirements. The facility will rapidly expand to remanufacture 100,000 PCs and low-end and mid-range IBM and non-IBM servers per year by 2014.

Synology today announced DiskStation DS1512+, a 5-bay next generation NAS server for delivering high performance and scalability with complete business solutions to small and medium businesses.

"NAS severs today are expected to produce higher levels of reliability and availability. With today's introduction, Synology customers can share and access data on DS1512+ in full confidence and satisfy the productivity, versatility and reliability they demand," said Peter Chen, Product Manager of Synology Inc.

Synology DS1512+ features a passive CPU cooling technology and a fan redundancy mechanism of two user-replaceable 80 mm fans, thus eliminating a single point of failure and ensure continuous system uptime during malfunction. The dual LAN network failover support allows DS1512+ to sustain the potential of one network discontinuity while maximizing system availability at all times.

According to the International Data Corporation's (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, factory revenue in the worldwide server market decreased 7.2% year over year to $14.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011 (4Q11). This was the first quarterly decline in factory revenue in two years. Worldwide server shipments increased 2.0% to 2.2 million units in 4Q11 when compared with the year-ago period.

For the full year 2011, worldwide server revenue increased 5.8% to $52.3 billion when compared to 2010, while worldwide unit shipments increased 4.2% to 8.3 million units.

On a year-over-year basis, all three classes of servers experienced decreased factory revenue totals in the fourth quarter. Volume systems experienced a 2.0% year-over-year factory revenue decline to $8.8 billion, while midrange revenue decreased 4.6% to $1.8 billion when compared to 4Q10. Additionally, high-end system revenue declined 18.4% to $3.7 billion in the quarter. This is the first time all three server classes have experienced year-over-year declines in revenue since the third quarter of 2009.

If you are trying to play Might and Magic: Heroes VI, The Settlers 7 and Tom Clancy's HAWX 2 or are trying to activate Assassin's Creed Revelations, Anno 2070 and or Driver: San Francisco don't bother. Ubisoft has announced a server migration this week that will block all access from players validating their legitimate purchases via Ubisofts DRM "always on" model. The original plan was to allow some of these games to remain playable. However it didn't seem to work. Some DRM schemes are more intrusive then others but the Ubisoft "always on" DRM has come under heavy fire this week from players turned critics via Twitter. One is quoted as saying, "Dear @Ubisoft I am totally unimpressed with your server upgrade strategy."

Ubisoft has yet to give a specified time when the servers will be re-launched and players can regain access to their games.

Next week, Ubisoft will be performing large-scale server maintenance, which could see its DRM-handling go offline. It would directly impact some games that are designed to work with Ubisoft's infamous "Always-Online" DRM, which requires gamers to be connected to the internet when playing games enabled with it. Tom Clancy's HAWX 2, Might & Magic: Heroes 6 and The Settlers 7 will be unplayable during the course of maintenance. Bigger titles such as Assassin's Creed: Revelations and Driver: San Francisco, however, will stay online for the duration of the switch-over. Ubisoft is loathed for its hyper-strict DRM that requires you to ping their DRM servers every few moments to reassure them you're not a pirate. It is even known to limit activations to your graphics card. This is yet another example where DRM only ends up hurting legitimate users more than piracy.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today unveils the next generation of its extremely popular and award-winning TuboNAS server lineup, along with its latest VioStor NVR video surveillance systems. In addition, the company is pleased to debut new NAS Firmware (3.6) and a new storage expansion solution for its business-class Turbo NAS.

The new NAS series, available in 2, 4, 5, 6, or 8-drive versions, are powered by a high performance dual-core Intel Atom processor. This new range provides the perfect blend of performance, business-ready features and value that make QNAP the ideal networked storage choice for small and medium-sized businesses.

With key enterprise architectures such as Sandy Bridge-EP awaiting launch, Intel has as many as 40 Xeon processor models to release in the first half of 2012, which it will likely launch in two rounds of 20 models, for each of the first two quarters of this year. In Q1, Intel will release six-core Xeon E5-1660 and E5-1650, and a yet to be named quad-core model; the three will be priced at US US$1,080, US$583 and US$294, respectively. In the same quarter, Intel will also launch 7 eight-core Xeon processor models, including the Xeon E5-2690four six-core processors including E5-2640, three quad-core processors including E5-2609 and dual-core processor E5-2637. Intel will also launch some low-power (energy-efficient) Xeon models, including Xeon E5-2450L and six-core E5-2430L priced at US$1,106 and US$662.

In the second quarter of 2012, Intel will launch the other 20 models. These include Xeon processors based on the Ivy Bridge silicon, and in the socket H2 (LGA1155) package. The Xeon E3-1290v2 is an example of such a chip. These high-grade Ivy Bridge chips will be priced in the range of US$189-884. Then on, 7 more E5 series models will be launched, including Xeon E5-2470, priced between US$192-1,440. Towards the end of the quarter, Intel will launch low-power eight-core and six-core Xeon processor models, including Xeon E5-2650L and E5-2630L, priced at priced at US$1,106 and US$662, respectively.

Asetek Inc., the world's leading supplier of liquid cooling solutions for computers, announced today that it will offer a range of liquid cooling solutions to address a diverse set of cooling challenges facing modern HPC clusters data centers. These challenges range from reducing latency in high frequency trading applications, to increasing performance and density in servers, HPC clusters and data centers and decreasing the amount of energy used for cooling. All of these solutions utilize the company's proven CPU and GPU cooling technology which is commercially deployed today in hundreds of thousands of computers around the world.

Today Windows updater may have brought "Bulldozer" users a little surprise. A hotfix that increases the AMD flagship processors performance. As this "hotfix" is bleeding edge news any benchmarks have yet to be seen but this confirms Windows 7 was in fact hampering "Bulldozer" from performing at 100% in all prior benches. What percentage it was previously performing at has yet to be determined. Here is a small snippet from the Hotfix release notes.

This article introduces an update that optimizes the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs that are used by Windows 7-based or Windows Server 2008 R2-based computers. Currently, the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs is slower than expected. This behavior occurs because the threading logic in Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2 is not optimized to use the Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) scheduling feature. This feature was introduced in the Bulldozer family of AMD CPUs.

You can download the Hotfix here.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that AMD Fusion '12 will be held June 11-14, 2012 in Bellevue, Washington. The company's annual developer summit will return to the Meydenbauer Center and the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue.

This event will build on the success of AMD Fusion '11, where more than 700 leaders from industry, academia, and government converged on the forefront of heterogeneous computing. The summit offers an engaging opportunity to learn more about next-generation software development and AMD Fusion System Architecture (FSA), Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) technology, central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) processor technologies, and programming methods using industry-standard application programming interfaces (APIs) such as OpenCL, OpenGL, Microsoft DirectCompute and C++ AMP.

Intel started shipping the new Pentium 350, a model designed specifically for low-cost servers, micro-servers, and home servers; a segment Intel originally planned to address with some of its Atom dual-core chips. The Pentium 350 is an offshoot from entry-level desktop and notebook platforms the Pentium brand is currently in charge of, it is designed with durability and energy-efficiency required by servers in mind.

Available in the LGA1155 package, Pentium 350 is a dual-core processor based on the 32 nm Sandy Bridge dual-core silicon. It is clocked at 1.20 GHz, and features 3 MB of shared L3 cache apart from 256 KB L2 cache per core. Thanks to its low clock speed, the chip's TDP is rated at just 15W, making it ideal for home and small business servers. It will naturally benefit from the high IPC of Sandy Bridge architecture. The chip features Intel64 instruction set, its integrated memory controller supports up to 32 GB of dual-channel DDR3-1066/DDR3-1333 MHz memory.

It looks like developer DICE has been doing a lot of listening to its customers, as the large number of complaints over in-game glitches has produced an almighty patch, fixing just about everything, including the kitchen sink, while making lots of little tweaks to improve gameplay and the user interface. On top of that, the patch is PC only for now as the console versions are taking "a bit longer due to [the] console certification process".

Bugfixes include such goodies as a "Black Screen" fix for an issue occurring on some PC Configurations; spawn protection improvements; increasing the damage from the 44 Magnum slightly; sharing your profile and stats with new Battlelog functionality; profile integration with Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and lots more. The full list appears below.

We have brought you the potential perils of the upcoming UEFI Forum-implemented - www.uefi.org - Windows 8 secure boot feature here, here and here. However, it appears that it may not be so 'secure' after all, since there appears to be a surefire way to circumvent it, at least for the moment, while it's in development.

Softpedia has scored an exclusive interview with security researcher Peter Kleissner, who has created various Windows (XP, Server 2003 etc) "bootkits", which allow OS infection at the highest privilege level, giving unrestricted access to the whole of the PC. His latest one, called Stoned Lite, shows how the Windows 8 secure boot process, still in development, can be subverted, as it stands. He is planning to release details of how the code works at the upcoming International Malware Conference (MalCon) - malcon.org - that will take place in India on November 25th. It appears that the real vulnerability exists in the legacy BIOS boot procedure, not in Microsoft's implementation of secure boot, as Kleissner said:

The problem with the legacy startup is that no one verifies the MBR, which makes it the vulnerable point. With UEFI and secure boot, all the boot applications and drivers have to be signed (otherwise they won't be loaded). You can compare it to TPM, although Arie van der Hoeven from Microsoft announced that the secure boot feature is mandatory for OEMs who want to be UEFI certified. It is a good message that security is not an option.

TYAN, an industry-leading server platform manufacturer and a subsidiary of MiTAC International Corp., will announce its latest platforms that fully support the latest 32nm AMD Opteron 6200 and 4200 Series processors (NYSE: AMD) at SC11. TYAN will be presenting a live demo of its GN70-B8236-IL, a powerful and cost-effective GPU/HPC 2U server solution installed with two AMD Opteron 6200 Series processors and two AMD FirePro V8800P Graphic Cards at TYAN booth #4202 during the show.

TYAN will be showcasing its broad portfolio featuring AMD Opteron 6200 and 4200 Series processors which ensure that customers experience power efficiency, performance, scalability and management flexibility via features such as AMD Turbo CORE technology and HyperTransport 3.0 Technology. TYAN offers a total of 13 AMD G34 solutions that support the 16-Core AMD Opteron 6200 Series processors which deliver advanced performance for complex workloads and offer flexible scalability for expanding HPC requirements. TYAN also offers six AMD C32 platforms which are compatible with AMD Opteron 4200 Series processors and target applications ranging from general purpose computing to highly-threaded mission-critical applications such as SMB cloud computing, web servers as well as VM applications and virtual machines.

AMD today announced AMD Ready Solutions for servers, a collaborative effort with leading server platform manufacturers to provide a broad portfolio of ready-to-market AMD Opteron 6200 Series processor-based motherboards worldwide through authorized AMD distributors the day of the launch. Because the upcoming AMD Opteron processors will drop into the existing socket infrastructure, leading motherboard manufacturers such as ASUS, Supermicro and TYAN are able to bring fully validated and rigorously tested platforms to market even more quickly. These new platforms address market demands and customer requirements for a wide range of server workloads, including high-performance computing (HPC), cloud computing, virtualization, enterprise and database applications and Web/email servers.

"With AMD Ready Solutions for servers, our customers can find complete and verified server platforms in the channel the day of launch," said Paul Struhsaker, corporate vice president and general manager, Commercial Business at AMD. "The combination of the existing socket infrastructure already in place with AMD Ready Solutions will enable faster and easier upgrade paths to new levels of server performance and scalability."

callofduty.com has published a blog entry from developer Infinity Ward / Sledgehammer detailing some of the features and improvements that will be in the upcoming MW3, to be released on November 8th:

I'm extremely excited about the PC version of Modern Warfare 3 this year, because we've been taking your feedback since Modern Warfare 2,and the franchise as a whole, on what you wanted to see in the PC version of Modern Warfare 3 and the team at Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games has put aton of emphasis on delivering a PC experience that brings in all the great things we added in Modern Warfare 2:
Lobby System, Matchmaking with a Party, Matchmaking for Public Games, Steam Integration (Friends List, Server Browser,Achievements, Join on Friends)
While combining it with your favorite features from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare:
Dedicated Servers (Join your favorite or set up your own,without any 3rd party hosting requirements), In-game Server Browser that allows you to filter by ping, map, gametype, hardcore, voice, password, and more. In addition, we're supporting PC specific features that give you even more control over your experience like RCON, Custom Game Saving, NoGFX / Audio Card Requirement on DS.exe, Voice Chat, and SSAO.

Yes, that's right the maker of notoriously vulnerable software is now blaming you, the user, should you get a virus, trojan or other malware infection on your Windows computer. However, it does look like they have some justification for saying this. For those with long attention spans, Microsoft have just released their 168 page Microsoft Security Intelligence Report 6MB PDF, with the stated aim of providing:

An in-depth perspective on software vulnerabilities and exploits, malicious code threats, and potentially unwanted software in the first half of 2011

The first thing to note about the report is that it is limited to its Malicious Software Removal Tool and Microsoft's other anti-malware products. Zero-day attacks that it can't detect are not included in the findings. So, surely it can't all be the user's fault then? It also means that the security angles from third party security vendors such as Kaspersky, Norton and McAfee aren't represented here.