Alphacool is at CloudFest—the world's largest event for cloud, hosting and internet infrastructure! The Alphacool team awaits all interested parties at booth #G10 and #G11. CloudFest, taking place from March 18-21, 2024 at Europa-Park (Rust, Germany), is the go-to venue for professionals to meet, network and explore new partnership opportunities. With so many captivating presentations, important workshops and exciting networking events, this festival can be the kind of experience that can transform businesses in a meaningful way.

An Alphacool highlight is the prototype of a CDU (Coolant Distribution Unit) for servers. With this first model, Alphacool presents a highly effective way of cooling servers on a large scale. The Alphacool 2U 19" Coolant Distribution Unit paired with the Alphacool 4U 19" Radiator Unit has a cooling capacity of up to 8000 watts in its current state of development. This is enough cooling for 40 1U servers, for example. External management is supplemented with in-house software.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking, and storage solution innovator, today officially launched NetBak PC Agent, a license-free full system backup solution for Windows. NetBak PC Agent is a utility that requires Hyper Data Protector, a NAS application which support endpoint devices backup (including VMs, Windows PCs and servers), to be installed on the user's NAS.

Existing NetBak Replicator users are encouraged to switch to NetBak PC Agent to enjoy a modern user interface and block-based backup for full systems, drives, folders, or files. Besides backup format updates, NetBak PC Agent supports new features such as:

• Bare-metal restoration: Restore a full PC/server system by creating a USB boot disk.
• Synthetic Incremental Backup: Reduce backup/restore time with QNAP's game-changing Synthetic Incremental Backup technology to increase IT efficiency and end-user productivity, helping to maintain data integrity by reducing RTO and RPO.
• Backup Explorer: Use the intuitive user interface of Backup Explorer on Hyper Data Protector to find a specific folder or file in various backup versions and restore them to client devices.
• Scheduled backup: Once users set backup rules, NetBak PC Agent does the rest.
• System backup restoration destination: Both local and remote site supported.

TrendForce underscores that the primary momentum for server shipments this year remains with American CSPs. However, due to persistently high inflation and elevated corporate financing costs curtailing capital expenditures, overall demand has not yet returned to pre-pandemic growth levels. Global server shipments are estimated to reach approximately. 13.654 million units in 2024, an increase of about 2.05% YoY. Meanwhile, the market continues to focus on the deployment of AI servers, with their shipment share estimated at around 12.1%.

Foxconn is expected to see the highest growth rate, with an estimated annual increase of about 5-7%. This growth includes significant orders such as Dell's 16G platform, AWS Graviton 3 and 4, Google Genoa, and Microsoft Gen9. In terms of AI server orders, Foxconn has made notable inroads with Oracle and has also secured some AWS ASIC orders.

GIGABYTE Technology, an IT pioneer advancing global industries through cloud and AI computing systems, is presenting innovative enterprise computing solutions at MWC 2024, featuring trailblazing servers, green computing solutions, and edge AI technologies, under the theme "Future of COMPUTING." These advancements usher in new possibilities for agile and sustainable IT strategies, enabling industries to harness real-time intelligence across hyperconnected data centers, cloud, edge, and devices, resulting in enhanced efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and competitive advantages, all propelled by the synergies of 5G and AI technologies.

GIGABYTE presents G593-ZX1/ZX2, the AI server featuring AMD Instinct MI300X 8-GPU, which is a new addition to GIGABYTE's flagship AI/HPC server series. Other highlighted exhibits include the high-density H223-V10 supporting the NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip, the G383-R80 server supporting four AMD Instinct MI300A APUs, and a G593 series AI server equipped with the powerful NVIDIA HGX H100 8-GPU.

Last Epoch is releasing Wednesday, February 21st, 2024, at 11:00am CT! Welcome everyone to the patch notes for Last Epoch's Release! It's been an amazing road to this point, and it's unreal to be writing patch notes without using the term "Beta Patch". With this patch Last Epoch will officially be leaving Early Access. We couldn't have made it to this point without all of you, our amazing community driving the world of Eterra alongside us. We can not say it enough, Thank you.

We also want to mention again here that to prepare the servers for our release on February 21st, we will be shutting down our servers 24 hours before the patch, starting: Tuesday, February 20st, 2024, at 11:00am CT. While the servers are down, authentication will not be possible. If you are already playing in offline mode before we take down the servers, you should be able to continue your play session, however offline will not be able to authenticate to log in once the servers are down. This is also a good point to note that one of the features being added with 1.0 is a true offline mode, which will prevent this kind of interference with offline mode in the future.

Hey Everyone,, thank you for your patience during the server maintenance. With it we deployed three "rapid-fixes" aimed at improving the situation with rewards often not being handed out properly, login-issues, and server capacity. To speak in technical terms, our services as well as our partner services have a rate limiter that denies connections beyond a volume per minute to prevent the entire system from failing. We managed to increase the rate limit from 10,000/min to 20,000/min and the total capacity of concurrent players was increased from 250,000 total to 360,000 total. This was however still not enough as the player count jumped to 360k after 5 1⁄2 minutes.

As such, the issue with login remains. If for any reason you get the "Failed to connect to server"issue it means that the maximum number of login requests for that particular minute is exceeded and/or that the servers are full and will require someone to log out before allowing new players in. As mentioned above, the increased capacity should require less retries to get in.

AMD's December 2023 launch of new Instinct series accelerators has generated a lot of tech news buzz and excitement within the financial world, but not many folks are privy to Team Red's MSRP for the CDNA 3.0 powered MI300X and MI300A models. A Citi report has pulled back the curtain, albeit with "projected" figures—an inside source claims that Microsoft has purchased the Instinct MI300X 192 GB model for ~$10,000 a piece. North American enterprise customers appear to have taken delivery of the latest MI300 products around mid-January time—inevitably, top secret information has leaked out to news investigators. SeekingAlpha's article (based on Citi's findings) alleges that the Microsoft data center division is AMD's top buyer of MI300X hardware—GPT-4 is reportedly up and running on these brand new accelerators.

The leakers claim that businesses further down the (AI and HPC) food chain are having to shell out $15,000 per MI300X unit, but this is a bargain when compared to NVIDIA's closest competing package—the venerable H100 SXM5 80 GB professional card. Team Green, similarly, does not reveal its enterprise pricing to the wider public—Tom's Hardware has kept tabs on H100 insider info and market leaks: "over the recent quarters, we have seen NVIDIA's H100 80 GB HBM2E add-in-card available for $30,000, $40,000, and even much more at eBay. Meanwhile, the more powerful H100 80 GB SXM with 80 GB of HBM3 memory tends to cost more than an H100 80 GB AIB." Citi's projection has Team Green charging up to four times more for its H100 product, when compared to Team Red MI300X pricing. NVIDIA's dominant AI GPU market position could be challenged by cheaper yet still very performant alternatives—additionally chip shortages have caused Jensen & Co. to step outside their comfort zone. Tom's Hardware reached out to AMD for comment on the Citi pricing claims—a company representative declined this invitation.

GIGABYTE Technology, a pioneer in computer hardware, has taken a significant stride in shaping its European business model. Today, GIGABYTE has broadened its e-commerce platform, shop.gigabyte.eu, by integrating enterprise server and server motherboard solutions into its product portfolio. Being at the forefront of computer hardware manufacturing, GIGABYTE recognizes that it is imperative to expand its presence in the EMEA region to maintain its leadership across all markets. With the introduction of our enterprise-level server and motherboard solutions, we are dedicated to delivering a diverse range of high-performance products directly to our B2B clients.

GIGABYTE offers a complete product portfolio that addresses all workloads from the data center to edge including traditional and emerging workloads in HPC and AI to data analytics, 5G/edge, cloud computing, and more. Our enduring partnerships with key technology leaders ensure that our new products are at the forefront of innovation and launch with new partner platforms. Our systems embody performance, security, scalability, and sustainability. Within the e-commerce product portfolio, we offer a selection of models from our Edge, Rack, GPU, and Storage series. Additionally, the platform provides server motherboards for custom integration. The current selection comprises a mix of solutions tailored to online sales. For more complex solutions, customers can get in touch via the integrated contact form.

Alphacool presents the ES U-shape RAM water cooler, an efficient way to successfully cool up to eight high-performance RAM modules in server and workstation systems. Modern RAM modules are becoming increasingly powerful and therefore generate more and more heat. The new U-shaped water cooler, made entirely of copper, can dissipate this heat very effectively. The reliable cooling of the RAM prevents power losses and thus ensures a stable system. Its flat design and versatile connection options allow for easy installation in almost any server or workstation setup. The inlets and outlets to the front and sides enable a highly flexible integration into the cooling circuit.

The Alphacool ES U-shape RAM water cooler has been specifically designed to meet the high demands of powerful memory modules in server and workstation systems. Up to 8 RAM modules can be efficiently cooled with the U-shaped water cooler. Its flat design and versatile connection options make it easy to install in almost any server or workstation case.

TYAN, a leading server platform design manufacturer and a MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation subsidiary, today introduced upgraded server platforms and motherboards based on the brand-new 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, formerly codenamed Emerald Rapids.

5th Gen Intel Xeon processor has increased to 64 cores, featuring a larger shared cache, higher UPI and DDR5 memory speed, as well as PCIe 5.0 with 80 lanes. Growing and excelling with workload-optimized performance, 5th Gen Intel Xeon delivers more compute power and faster memory within the same power envelope as the previous generation. "5th Gen Intel Xeon is the second processor offering inside the 2023 Intel Xeon Scalable platform, offering improved performance and power efficiency to accelerate TCO and operational efficiency", said Eric Kuo, Vice President of Server Infrastructure Business Unit, MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation. "By harnessing the capabilities of Intel's new Xeon CPUs, TYAN's 5th-Gen Intel Xeon-supported solutions are designed to handle the intense demands of HPC, data centers, and AI workloads.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Manufacturer for AI, Cloud, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is announcing three new additions to its AMD-based H13 generation of GPU Servers, optimized to deliver leading-edge performance and efficiency, powered by the new AMD Instinct MI300 Series accelerators. Supermicro's powerful rack scale solutions with 8-GPU servers with the AMD Instinct MI300X OAM configuration are ideal for large model training.

The new 2U liquid-cooled and 4U air-cooled servers with the AMD Instinct MI300A Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) accelerators are available and improve data center efficiencies and power the fast-growing complex demands in AI, LLM, and HPC. The new systems contain quad APUs for scalable applications. Supermicro can deliver complete liquid-cooled racks for large-scale environments with up to 1,728 TFlops of FP64 performance per rack. Supermicro worldwide manufacturing facilities streamline the delivery of these new servers for AI and HPC convergence.

GIGABYTE Technology: Giga Computing, a subsidiary of GIGABYTE and an industry leader in high-performance servers, and IT infrastructure, today announced the GIGABYTE G383-R80 for the AMD Instinct MI300A APU and two GIGABYTE G593 series servers for the AMD Instinct MI300X GPU and AMD EPYC 9004 Series processor. As a testament to the performance of AMD Instinct MI300 Series family of products, the El Capitan supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses the MI300A APU to power exascale computing. And these new GIGABYTE servers are the ideal platform to propel discoveries in HPC & AI at exascale.⁠

Marrying of a CPU & GPU: G383-R80
For incredible advancements in HPC there is the GIGABYTE G383-R80 that houses four LGA6096 sockets for MI300A APUs. This chip integrates a CPU that has twenty-four AMD Zen 4 cores with a powerful GPU built with AMD CDNA 3 GPU cores. And the chiplet design shares 128 GB of unified HBM3 memory for impressive performance for large AI models. The G383 server has lots of expansion slots for networking, storage, or other accelerators, with a total of twelve PCIe Gen 5 slots. And in the front of the chassis are eight 2.5" Gen 5 NVMe bays to handle heavy workloads such as real-time big data analytics and latency-sensitive workloads in finance and telecom. ⁠

NVIDIA's most recent FY3Q24 financial reports reveal record-high revenue coming from its data center segment, driven by escalating demand for AI servers from major North American CSPs. However, TrendForce points out that recent US government sanctions targeting China have impacted NVIDIA's business in the region. Despite strong shipments of NVIDIA's high-end GPUs—and the rapid introduction of compliant products such as the H20, L20, and L2—Chinese cloud operators are still in the testing phase, making substantial revenue contributions to NVIDIA unlikely in Q4. Gradual shipments increases are expected from the first quarter of 2024.

The US ban continues to influence China's foundry market as Chinese CSPs' high-end AI server shipments potentially drop below 4% next year
TrendForce reports that North American CSPs like Microsoft, Google, and AWS will remain key drivers of high-end AI servers (including those with NVIDIA, AMD, or other high-end ASIC chips) from 2023 to 2024. Their estimated shipments are expected to be 24%, 18.6%, and 16.3%, respectively, for 2024. Chinese CSPs such as ByteDance, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent (BBAT) are projected to have a combined shipment share of approximately 6.3% in 2023. However, this could decrease to less than 4% in 2024, considering the current and potential future impacts of the ban.

ARCTIC is expanding its range of server fans with two new models. Following the launch of the S4028 last year, ARCTIC is once again bringing its cooling expertise to the server market with the new S8038-7K and S8038-10K fans.

Efficient, reliable, durable and quiet - the demands on server cooling are high. ARCTIC's new S8038 80 mm fans are optimized for precisely these requirements. Equipped with an actively cooled motor, not only is the service life increased by up to 50 %, energy consumption is also reduced. The double ball bearing guarantees smooth continuous operation and resists external influences such as heat and dust.

TYAN, an industry leader in server platform design and a subsidiary of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation, debuts its new server line-up for 4th Gen AMD EPYC & AMD Ryzen Processors at SC23, Booth #1917, in the Colorado Convention Center, Denver, CO, November 13-16.

AMD EPYC 9004 processor features leadership performance and is optimized for a wide range of HPC, cloud-native computing and Generative AI workloads
TYAN offers server platforms supporting the AMD EPYC 9004 processors that provide up to 128 Zen 4C cores and 256 MB of L3 Cache for dynamic cloud-native applications with high performance, density, energy efficiency, and compatibility.

ASRock Rack Inc., the leading innovative server company, today is set to showcase a comprehensive range of servers for diverse AI workloads catering to scenarios from the edge, on-premises, and to the cloud at booth #1737 at SC 23 held at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, USA. The event is from November 13th to 16th, and ASRock Rack will feature the following significant highlights:

At SC 23, ASRock Rack will demonstrate the NVIDIA-Qualified 2U4G-GENOA/M3 and 4U8G series GPU server solutions along with the NVIDIA H100 PCIe. The ASRock Rack 4U8G and 4U10G series GPU servers are able to accommodate eight to ten 400 W dual-slot GPU cards and 24 hot-swappable 2.5" drives, designed to deliver exceptional performance for demanding AI workloads deployed in the cloud environment. The 2U4G-GENOA/M3, tailored for lighter workloads, is powered by a single AMD EPYC 9004 series processor and is able to support four 400 W dual-slot GPUs while having additional PCIe and OCP NIC 3.0 slots for expansions.

Today, AMD announced the extension of its 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processor family with six new offerings providing a robust suite of data center CPUs to meet the needs of general IT and mainstream computing for businesses seeking to leverage the economics of established platforms. The complete family of 3rd Gen AMD EPYC CPUs complements the leadership performance and efficiency of the latest 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors with impressive price-performance, modern security features and energy efficiency for less technically demanding business critical workloads.

The race to deliver AI and high performance computing is creating a technology gap for IT decision-makers seeking mainstream performance. To meet the growing demand for widely deployed, cost effective and proven mainstream solutions in the mid-market and in the channel, AMD is extending the 3rd Gen EPYC CPU offering to provide excellent value, performance, energy efficiency and security features for business-critical applications. The 3rd Gen AMD EPYC CPU portfolio enables a wide array of broadly deployed enterprise server solutions, supported by trusted channel sellers and OEMs such as Cisco, Dell Technologies, Gigabyte, HPE, Lenovo and Supermicro.

GIGABYTE Technology, Giga Computing, a subsidiary of GIGABYTE and an industry leader in high-performance servers, server motherboards, and workstations, today announced direct liquid cooling (DLC) multi-node servers for NVIDIA Grace CPU & NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip. In addition, a DLC ready Intel-based server for the NVIDIA HGX H100 8-GPU platform and a high-density server for AMD EPYC 9004 processors. For the ultimate in efficiency, is also a new 12U single-phase immersion tank. All these mentioned products will be at GIGABYTE booth #355 at SC23.

Just announced high-density CPU servers include Intel Xeon-based H263-S63-LAN1 and AMD EPYC-based H273-Z80-LAN1. These 2U 4 node servers employ DLC for all eight CPUs, and although it is dense computing CPU performance achieves its full potential. In August, GIGABYTE announced new servers for NVIDIA HGX H100 GPU, and now adds the DLC version to the G593 series, G593-SD0-LAX1, for NVIDIA HGX H100 8-GPU.

EK, the leading premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer, will soon provide a one-stop-shop purchasing option where System Integrators, Data Centers, AI/ML-focused companies, and similar customers can get full enterprise-grade custom liquid-cooling loops for their systems. The products belong to the EK-Pro line of professional liquid cooling solutions tailor-made for HPC systems and high-compute density applications. This means that System Integrators and Data Centers will be able to purchase full liquid cooling loops for their HPC servers and workstations and enjoy all the benefits that water-cooled HPC systems can provide.

The Advantages of Liquid Cooling for HPC Systems
High Performance Computing facilities use servers and workstations that leverage powerful GPUs, multithreaded CPUs, petabytes of RAM, and extensive storage space. All this computing power, despite modern advancements in manufacturing and power efficiency, generates tremendous amounts of heat. In fact, it is estimated that up to 40% of the total energy requirements of these facilities is spent on keeping the IT equipment within acceptable operating temperatures. Plus, the components that use conventional air cooling tend to underperform and have shorter lifespans.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution manufacturer for AI, Cloud, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is announcing one of the industry's broadest portfolios of new GPU systems based on the NVIDIA reference architecture, featuring the latest NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper and NVIDIA Grace CPU Superchip. The new modular architecture is designed to standardize AI infrastructure and accelerated computing in compact 1U and 2U form factors while providing ultimate flexibility and expansion ability for current and future GPUs, DPUs, and CPUs. Supermicro's advanced liquid-cooling technology enables very high-density configurations, such as a 1U 2-node configuration with 2 NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips integrated with a high-speed interconnect. Supermicro can deliver thousands of rack-scale AI servers per month from facilities worldwide and ensures Plug-and-Play compatibility.

"Supermicro is a recognized leader in driving today's AI revolution, transforming data centers to deliver the promise of AI to many workloads," said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. "It is crucial for us to bring systems that are highly modular, scalable, and universal for rapidly evolving AI technologies. Supermicro's NVIDIA MGX-based solutions show that our building-block strategy enables us to bring the latest systems to market quickly and are the most workload-optimized in the industry. By collaborating with NVIDIA, we are helping accelerate time to market for enterprises to develop new AI-enabled applications, simplifying deployment and reducing environmental impact. The range of new servers incorporates the latest industry technology optimized for AI, including NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips, BlueField, and PCIe 5.0 EDSFF slots."

GIGABYTE Technology, Giga Computing, a subsidiary of GIGABYTE and an industry leader in high-performance servers, server motherboards, and workstations, today announced ahead of exhibiting at the OCP Global Summit new OCP ORv3 based solutions, including ones designed for GPU centric workloads in immersion cooling. The new GIGABYTE products include a 2OU node tray, TO25-BT0, and compute nodes: TO25-S10, TO25-S11, TO25-S12, TO25-Z10, TO25-Z11, and TO25-Z12. For immersion cooling server deployments with ORv3 specifications are the new GPU servers: TO15-S40, TO15-S41, and TO15-Z40.

Our commitment to support Open Compute Project's designs dates back almost a decade starting with our OCP v1.0 products, and now we are releasing some well-designed, in demand ORv3 products. Through discussions with several customers, we decided to move forward with the development of these configurations. These designs check the boxes for specifications that are required," said Vincent Wang, Sales VP at Giga Computing. "We will continue supporting ORv3 specifications and we have more products on the horizon in Q1 2024.

Fueled by an AI-driven inventory stocking frenzy across the supply chain, TrendForce reveals that Q2 revenue for the top 10 global IC design powerhouses soared to US $38.1 billion, marking a 12.5% quarterly increase. In this rising tide, NVIDIA seized the crown, officially dethroning Qualcomm as the world's premier IC design house, while the remainder of the leaderboard remained stable.

AI charges ahead, buoying IC design performance amid a seasonal stocking slump
NVIDIA is reaping the rewards of a global transformation. Bolstered by the global demand from CSPs, internet behemoths, and enterprises diving into generative AI and large language models, NVIDIA's data center revenue skyrocketed by a whopping 105%. A deluge of shipments, including the likes of their advanced Hopper and Ampere architecture HGX systems and the high-performing InfinBand, played a pivotal role. Beyond that, both gaming and professional visualization sectors thrived under the allure of fresh product launches. Clocking a Q2 revenue of US$11.33 billion (a 68.3% surge), NVIDIA has vaulted over both Qualcomm and Broadcom to seize the IC design throne.

Intel Innovation 2023 -- Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is announcing future support for the upcoming 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors. In addition, Supermicro will soon offer early shipping and free remote early access testing of the new Systems via its JumpStart Program for qualified customers. To learn more, go to www.supermicro.com/x13 for details. The Supermicro 8x GPU optimized servers, the SuperBlade servers, and the Hyper Series will soon be ready for customers to test their workloads on the new CPU.

"Supermicro's range of Generative High-Performance AI systems, including recently launched GPUs, continues to lead the industry in AI offerings with its broad range of X13 family of servers designed for various workloads, from the edge to the cloud," said Charles Liang, president, and CEO, Supermicro. "Our support for the upcoming 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors, with more cores, an increased performance per watt, and the latest DDR5-5600 MHz memory, will allow our customers to realize even greater application performance and power efficiency for AI, Cloud, 5G Edge, and Enterprise workloads. These new features will help customers accelerate their business and maximize their competitive advantage."

ASUS today announced ASUS S14NA-U12, its latest server motherboard, and designed to harness the power of the latest AMD EPYC 8004-series processors. This motherboard is engineered to deliver robust performance and energy efficiency for single-socket servers, both within and beyond the confines of traditional data centers.

Cost-efficient solutions
ASUS recognizes the paramount importance of cost-efficiency in the business realm. The all-new ASUS S14NA-U12 server motherboard leverages the impressive performance and streamlined platform componentry of EPYC 8004-series processors, enabling original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to offer cost-effective, business-relevant server configurations. The adherence to industry standards in platform management, coupled with top-tier security features and energy efficiency of the EPYC 8004-series processors, significantly reduces operational costs compared to power-hungry, non-standard alternatives. Customers can expect best-in-class total cost of ownership (TCO) across numerous deployments with systems based on AMD EPYC 8004-series processors.

ASRock Rack, the leading innovative server company, today announced its latest server motherboard lineup now supports the AMD EPYC 8004 Series processors which extend the 4th Gen EPYC Family into new markets.

The AMD EPYC 8004 Series processors bring the benefits of the "Zen 4c" processor core to markets that seek strong performance but also have significant requirements for efficient, dense form factors, limited available power, and quieter operations. "AMD EPYC 8004 Processors are purpose-built to deliver strong performance and energy efficiency in an optimized, single-socket package," said Lynn Comp, corporate vice president, Server Product and Technology Marketing, AMD. "The combination of impressive performance and streamlined platform componentry of the EPYC 8004 Series CPUs means system builders can offer their customers cost-efficient business-relevant configurations."