During the Supercomputing (SC) 21 event, Intel has disclosed additional information regarding the company's upcoming Xeon server processor lineup, codenamed Sapphire Rapids. One of the central areas of improvement for the new processor generation is the core architecture based on Golden Cove, the same core found in Alder Lake processors for consumers. However, the only difference between the Golden Cove variant found in Alder Lake and Sapphire Rapids is the amount of L2 (level two) cache. With Alder Lake, Intel equipped each core with 1.25 MB of its L2 cache. However, with Sapphire Rapids, each core receives a 2 MB bank.

One of the most exciting things about the processors, confirmed by Intel today, is the inclusion of High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM). These processors operate with eight memory channels carrying DDR5 memory and offer PCIe Gen5 IO expansion. Intel has confirmed that Sapphire Rapids Xeons will feature up to 64 GB of HBM2E memory, including a few operating modes. The first is a simple HBM caching mode, where the HBM memory acts as a buffer for the installed DDR5. This method is transparent to software and allows easy usage. The second method is Flat Mode, which means that both DDR5 and HBM are used as contiguous address spaces. And finally, there exists an HBM-only mode that utilizes the HBM2E modules as the only system memory, and applications fit inside it. This has numerous benefits, primarily drawn from HBM's performance and reduced latency.

The 58th annual edition of the TOP500 saw little change in the Top10. The Microsoft Azure system called Voyager-EUS2 was the only machine to shake up the top spots, claiming No. 10. Based on an AMD EPYC processor with 48 cores and 2.45GHz working together with an NVIDIA A100 GPU and 80 GB of memory, Voyager-EUS2 also utilizes a Mellanox HDR Infiniband for data transfer.

While there were no other changes to the positions of the systems in the Top10, Perlmutter at NERSC improved its performance to 70.9 Pflop/s. Housed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Perlmutter's increased performance couldn't move it from its previously held No. 5 spot.

Intel's Aurora supercomputer is a $500 million contract with the US Department of Energy to deliver an exascale supercomputer for Argonne National Laboratory. The project aims to build a machine capable of cranking over one ExaFLOP of computing at sustained workloads. The supercomputer aims to reach two ExaFLOPs of computing power once the installation system is completed and powered. The contract bound Intel to create accelerators that are powerful enough to achieve this magical number. However, they left Intel with room to do a little bit extra. With Ponte Vecchio GPU behind the project, it seems like the GPU is performing better than expected.

According to Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger, the system will reach over 2 ExaFLOPs at peak and a bit below in sustained workloads. As per preliminary calculations done by The Next Platform, the system's estimations point towards 2.43 ExaFLOPs peak and around 1.7 ExaFLOPs in sustained workloads at Double-precision floating-point format math, aka FP64. The system will utilize Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids processors with HBM memory and the powerful Ponte Vecchio GPU with 47 tiles and over 100 billion transistors.

Axiomtek - a world-renowned leader relentlessly devoted in the research, development, and manufacture of series of innovative and reliable industrial computer products of high efficiency - is pleased to introduce the IPC970, its new feature-rich, expandable 4-slot industrial system. This intelligent industrial computer is powered by the Intel Xeon or 10th generation Intel Core i7/i5/i3 processors (code name: Comet Lake S) with the Intel W480E chipset. The powerful edge computing system supports NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card with 10,496 CUDA cores and a whopping 24 GB of GDDR6X memory for powerful GPU computing capability. The ruggedized IPC970 enables simultaneous AI processing for intelligent AI computing at the edge.

The Axiomtek's IPC970 provides flexible expansion options with one I/O module slot and three PCIe slots plus one blank expansion slot. In addition, it has a full-size PCIe Mini Card slot for Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/LTE modules, one M.2 Key B 3042/3050 socket for 5G wireless connections, and one M.2 Key E 2230 socket for Wi-Fi/Bluetooth modules. Its front-facing I/O design makes it easy to access and deploy. To ensure stable and reliable operation in harsh industrial environments, the IPC970 has a wide operating temperature range of -10°C to +70°C and a power input of 24 V DC (uMin=19 V/uMax=30 V) with power-on delay function, over-voltage protection, over current protection, and reverse voltage protection.

Intel Corporation today reported third-quarter 2021 financial results. "Q3 shone an even greater spotlight on the global demand for semiconductors, where Intel has the unique breadth and scale to lead. Our focus on execution continued as we started delivering on our IDM 2.0 commitments. We broke ground on new fabs, shared our accelerated path to regain process performance leadership, and unveiled our most dramatic architectural innovations in a decade. We also announced major customer wins across every part of our business," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. "We are still in the early stages of our journey, but I see the enormous opportunity ahead, and I couldn't be prouder of the progress we are making towards that opportunity."

In the third quarter, the company generated $9.9 billion in cash from operations and paid dividends of $1.4 billion. Intel CFO George Davis announced plans to retire from Intel in May 2022. He will continue to serve in his current role while Intel conducts a search for a new CFO and until his successor is appointed. Third-quarter revenue was led by strong recovery in the Enterprise portion of DCG and in IOTG, which saw higher demand amid recovery from the economic impacts of COVID-19. The Client Computing Group (CCG) was down due to lower notebook volumes due to industry-wide component shortages, and on lower adjacent revenue, partially offset by higher average selling prices (ASPs) and strength in desktop.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products for home, businesses and enterprises, presents its line-up of 8-bay storage servers designed to meet the needs of modern businesses for enterprise virtualization, data-intensive applications, and service continuity. TerraMaster's Rackmount NAS Series is equipped with the latest technologies and advanced securities to deliver efficient performance with excellent data security making it ideal for business and government use.

The TerraMaster 8-Bay Rackmount NAS Series support up to 1000 user accounts with RBAC rights management and Windows ACL. This allows easy user and access rights management. The 8-Bay Rackmount NAS Series supports 2.5" and 3.5" drives and comes fitted with four RJ-45 1 GbE LAN ports. All models also come with one PCIe 3.0 X16 slot and two PCIe 3.0 x8 slots offering expansion flexibility for 10GbE NIC cards or dedicated RAID cards.

DRAM contract prices are likely to exit a bullish period that lasted three quarters and be on the downswing in 4Q21 at a QoQ decline of 3-8%, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. This decline can be attributed to not only the declining procurement activities of DRAM buyers going forward, but also the drop in DRAM spot prices ahead of contract prices. While the buying and selling sides attempt to gain the advantage in future transactions, the DRAM market's movement in 2022 will primarily be determined by suppliers' capacity expansion strategies in conjunction with potential growths in demand. The capacity expansion plans of the three largest DRAM suppliers (Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron) for 2022 are expected to remain conservative, resulting in a 17.9% growth in total DRAM bit supply next year. On the demand side, inventory levels at the moment are relatively high. Hence, DRAM bit demand is expected to grow by 16.3% next year and lag behind bit supply growth. TrendForce therefore forecasts a shift in the DRAM market next year from shortage to surplus.

Some of you might remember Intel's Upgrade Service, aka software locked CPUs that launched back in 2010 with the Pentium G6951 that could have an extra 1 MB of cache and Hyper-Threading unlocked for a mere $50. Well, it seems like Intel is working on something similar, but for Xeon CPUs this time around, although the exact details aren't clear as yet.

Phoronix spotted a Linux patch on GitHub for something called Intel Software Defined Silicon or SDSi for short. It's clear that it's for Xeon CPUs and the GitHub page mentions that SDSi "allows the configuration of additional CPU features through a license activation process." There's very little to go by beyond this, but it's not hard to draw parallels with Intel's Upgrade Service from last decade, just this time Intel is targeting its business customers rather than consumers.

Presenting at the China Flash-Market Summit, KIOXIA unveiled its plans to leverage PCI-Express 5.0 to double SSD performance over the current generation. In typical 4-lane U.2 and M.2 connections, PCI-Express Gen 5 enables an interface bandwidth of 16 GB/s per direction (comparable to PCI-Express 3.0 x16). This means that accounting for interface overheads, typical PCIe Gen 5 SSDs will dance around the 11-15 GB/s (sequential) range. KIOXIA unveiled the CD7, a prototype enterprise SSD in the 2.5-inch EDSFF E3S form-factor with U.2 PCI-Express 5.0 x4 interface. This drive, the company claims, offers up to 14 GB/s sequential transfers, more than double the performance of the current CM6 series drives that leverage PCI-Express Gen 4.

KIOXIA said that its first PCI-Express Gen 5 SSDs will begin shipping in Q4-2021, although it didn't mention if this was mass-market, or to select customers. The first enterprise platforms to leverage Gen 5 won't arrive before mid-2022, with Intel's Xeon "Sapphire Rapids" processors that feature PCI-Express Gen 5 support. KIOXIA sounded optimistic about the future growth in performance of SSDs. "Today, Moore's Law is technically dead in both the CPU and DRAM, but it still works at the PCIe clock rate," the company said, adding ""2015 [was] be the third generation of PCIe, 2019 is the fourth generation, and 2022 will be the fifth generation. Even if people spend a lot of money, they can't double CPU nodes to improve system performance, but buying Gen 5 SSD instead of Gen 4 SSD can greatly improve system performance."

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) selected next-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named "Sapphire Rapids") to power the supercomputers used within NNSA's Life Extension Program for mission-critical efforts in stockpile stewardship. The NNSA's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory awarded a subcontract to Dell Technologies to supply the Intel-powered computing systems that will be deployed at the NNSA's Tri-Labs (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories).

Today's news supports the NNSA's Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program operated at the NNSA's Tri-Labs. The Commodity Technology Systems contract (CTS-2) awarded today will enable these three national laboratories to build more powerful, energy-efficient computing systems that will focus on performing extensive modeling and simulation capabilities in support of NNSA's stockpile stewardship program.

Intel has been working on a technology that will improve the lives of all users that have an Intel-based processor in their system. According to the recent round of patches for the Linux kernel, Intel's engineers have been working on a feature called Intel Seamless Update, which promises to bring updating of system firmware without a need to reboot. First of all, it is important to note that firmware upgrades have been stuck at requiring reboot in order to apply patches. This has caused many systems to be down and to slow down the infrastructure by a wide margin, as these updates can last up to several minutes, where the system is rebooting and can not be used.

Intel has presented an idea of creating a technology that will update system firmware, such as UEFI, in the run time. That means that the system will be able to apply firmware patches, without ever needing a reboot, minimizing downtime. This is especially valuable for customers with very high service level agreements (SLAs) around downtime, meaning that almost 100% uptime (not possible to be 100% generally speaking) is required for these systems. An example of this would be medical server infrastructure, which has to constantly be available for access. Using this technology, systems such as these could update their firmware and be online non-stop, without maybe ever needing to reboot. The said feature is supposed to arrive in time for the launch alongside Intel "Sapphire Rapids" Xeon processors.

TYAN, an industry-leading server platform design manufacturer and a MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation subsidiary, today introduced a new Intel Xeon E-2300 processor-based server motherboard to the market. The new product is designed to offer enhanced performance, greater PCIe support and faster memory speeds for entry-level servers in data centers and prevailing Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) servers in 5G networks.

"TYAN's Tempest CX S5560 server motherboard based on Intel Xeon E-2300 processor is optimized for cloudand edge computing applications. By utilizing Intel's features of increased DDR4 speeds, double M.2 slots, and PCIe 4.0 capabilities, TYAN's customers can get outstanding performance and maintain their competitiveness with cost-effective benefit", said Danny Hsu, Vice President of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation's Server Infrastructure Business Unit.

Intel today released the Xeon E-2300 series enterprise processors for entry level servers, based on the 14 nm "Rocket Lake-E" silicon. These are slightly different from the Xeon W-1300 series processors targeting workstations. The E-2300 has a more server-relevant feature-set, and is designed for high uptime. You get ECC memory support, as well as vPro, SGX, and MPX (memory encryption). You still get only client-relevant AVX-512 instructions found in 11th Gen Core processors, as well as DLBoost AI acceleration.

The "Rocket Lake-E" silicon comes with up to 8 "Cypress Cove" CPU cores, each with 512 KB of dedicated L2 cache, and 16 MB of shared L3 cache. The processor features a 2-channel DDR4 memory interface that supports up to 128 GB of DDR4-3200 memory. It puts out 20 PCI-Express 4.0 lanes that can be segmented in a number of ways; as well as the Intel C250 series chipset puts out 24 PCI-Express 3.0 lanes. Chips in this series come with TDP of up to 95 W.

Tachyum Inc. today announced that it has successfully executed the Linux boot process on the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) prototype of its Prodigy Universal Processor, in 2 months after taking delivery of the IO motherboard from manufacturing. This achievement proves the stability of the Prodigy emulation system and allows the company to move forward with additional testing before advancing to tape out.

Tachyum engineers were able to perform the Linux boot, execute a short user-mode program and shutdown the system on the fully functional FPGA emulation system. Not only does this successful test prove that the basic processor is stable, but interrupts, exceptions, timing, and system-mode transitions are, as well. This is a key milestone, which dramatically reduces risk, as booting and running large and complex pieces of software like Linux reliably on the Tachyum FPGA processor prototype shows that verification and hardware stability are past the most difficult turning point, and it is now obvious that verification and testing should successfully complete in the coming months. Designers are now shifting their attention to debug and verification processes, running hundreds of trillions of test cycles over the next few months, and running large scale user mode applications with compatibility testing to get the processor to production quality.

Intel's upcoming Xeon "Sapphire Rapids" processor features a memory interface topology that closely resembles that of first-generation AMD EPYC "Rome," thanks to the multi-chip module design of the processor. Back in 2017, Intel's competing "Skylake-SP" Xeon processors were based on monolithic dies. Despite being spread across multiple memory controller tiles, the 6-channel DDR4 memory interface was depicted by Intel as an advantage over EPYC "Rome." AMD's first "Zen" based enterprise processor was a multi-chip module of four 14 nm, 8-core "Zeppelin" dies, each with a 2-channel DDR4 memory interface that added up to the processor's 8-channel I/O. Much like "Sapphire Rapids," a CPU core from any of the four dies had access to memory and I/O controlled by any other die, as the four were networked over the Infinity Fabric interconnect in a configuration that essentially resembled "4P on a stick."

With "Sapphire Rapids," Intel is taking a largely similar approach—it has four compute tiles (dies) instead of a monolithic die, which Intel says helps with scalability in both directions; and each of the four compute tiles has a 2-channel DDR5 or 1024-bit HBM memory interface, which add up to the processor's 8-channel DDR5 total I/O. Intel says that CPU cores from each tile has equal access to memory, last-level cache, and I/O controlled by another die. Inter-tile communication is handled by EMIB physical media (55 micron bump-pitch wiring). UPI 2.0 makes up the inter-socket interconnect. Each of the four compute tiles has 24 UPI 2.0 links that operate at 16 GT/s. Intel didn't detail how memory is presented to the operating system, or the NUMA hierarchy, however much of Intel's engineering effort appears to be focused on making this disjointed memory I/O work as if "Sapphire Rapids" were a monolithic die. The company claims "consistent low-latency, high cross-sectional bandwidth across the SoC."

Intel today announced AWS customers can access the latest 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors via the new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) M6i instances. Optimized for high-performance, general-purpose compute, the latest Intel-powered Amazon EC2 instances provide customers increased flexibility and more choices when running their Intel-powered infrastructure within the AWS cloud. Today's news is a further continuation of Intel and AWS' close collaboration, giving customers scalable compute instances in the cloud for almost 15 years.

"Our latest 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors are our highest performance data center CPU and provide AWS customers an excellent platform to run their most critical business applications. We look forward to continuing our long-term collaboration with AWS to deploy industry-leading technologies within AWS' cloud infrastructure." -Sandra Rivera, Intel executive vice president and general manager, Datacenter and AI Group.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products for home, businesses and enterprises, launches the U12 rackmount enterprise cloud storage server equipped with a powerful quad-core Intel Xeon processor.TheTerraMaster U12 is a 12-bay networked storage server with high scalability. The U12 is designed to meet the requirements of enterprise virtualizations, data-intensive applications, and service continuity.

The new TerraMaster U12 Series rackmount storage server is the ideal solution for business cloud storage servers, providing high-speed data storage for multiple sharing users. The latest TerraMaster U12 rackmount server features an upgraded processor, up to a quad-core Intel Xeon, and 8 GB of DDR4 memory that's upgradeable to 64 GB maximum. The rackmount server also comes with two PCIe X16 Gen3 slots offering upgrade options such as 10 GbE NIC cards and RAID cards. Also, users can configure and upgrade the CPU and memory to enhance performance as required.

Intel has recently unveiled that their technology powered the 8K 60 FPS Tokyo Olympics broadcast which was available to select customers in Japan. The games were recorded in 8K at 60 FPS with 4:2:2 Chroma subsampling and 10-bit HDR which resulted in a bitrate of 48 Gbps. This uncompressed stream was then encoded on servers each featuring quad 28 core Xeon 8380H processors and 384 GB of ram into two HEVC distribution streams at 250 Mbps and 50-100 Mbps bitrates. These streams were then distributed to users over the internet where the 8K stream could be decoded and displayed on an 8K TV over HDMI 2.1. Intel used a workstation PC with an 18-core Xeon W-2295 and 64 GB of ram to decode and play the video stream on the TV. This 8K service was only made available to select NHK subscribers in Japan while most international broadcasts offered a maximum resolution of 4K.

EK, the leading liquid cooling gear manufacturer, today announces the availability of two high-performance liquid cooling solutions for the Intel Xeon W-3300 processor family, optimized for advanced workstation professionals in a single-socket LGA 4189 solution. A kit is also available, offering enterprise-grade components and tools to build the whole loop to effectively cool the socket LGA 4189 Intel processors.

EK is no stranger to the demanding needs of heavily threaded, I/O intensive workloads across Architecture, Engineering and Construction, Media and Entertainment, and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning industries. The EK-Pro QDC Kit P360 LGA 4189 bundles the EK-Pro CPU Water Block, a 360 mm radiator, and enterprise-grade water loop parts. It is designed to cool the most powerful of Intel Xeon W-3300 processors, which offer up to 38 cores and 76 threads with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology, up to 64 CPU PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes, up to 4.0 GHz with Intel Turbo Boost 2.0 technology, and are rated up to 270 W of power.

The leading global motherboard, manufacturer, ASRock, is proud to announce its Intel C621A powered workstation motherboards, the C621A WS, this motherboard is able to pair with the latest Xeon W-3300 processors, giving ultimate performance for almost every application such as content creating, rendering machine and high-end workstation.

The ASRock C621A WS is a platform solely built for workstation application from ground up, the 4 PCIe 4.0 x16, 3 PCIe 4.0 x8 on this motherboard supports up to 4 dual-slot GPU/FPGA cards, perfect for Deep learning workstation, Visual computing such as 3D design and creation. The motherboard has 8 DIMM slots running at 1 DIMM per channel mode giving ultimate stability and performance, supporting DDR4 RDIMM, LRDIMM, and Intel Optane Persistent Memory in order to maximize the system capability.

Intel today launched its newest generation Intel Xeon W-3300 processors, available today from its system integrator partners. Built for advanced workstation professionals, Intel Xeon W-3300 processors offer uncompromised performance, expanded platform capabilities, and enterprise-grade security and reliability in a single-socket solution.

Intel Xeon W-3300 processors are intelligently engineered to push the boundaries of performance, with a new processor core architecture that transforms for what expert workstation users can accomplish on a workstation.

The Intel Xeon W-3300 processors are designed for next-gen professional applications with heavily threaded, input/output-intensive workloads. Use cases stretch across artificial intelligence (AI), architecture, engineering, construction (AEC), and media and entertainment (M&E). With a new processor core architecture to transform efficiency and advanced technologies to support data integrity, Intel Xeon W-3300 processors are equipped to deliver uncompromising workstation performance.

Noctua today presented four CPU coolers and a separate mounting kit for Intel's LGA4189 platform. The new NH-U14S DX-4189, NH-U12S DX-4189, NH-U9 DX-4189 and NH-D9 DX-4189 4U are ideal for creating whisper-quiet high-end workstations using Intel's just-announced Ice Lake-64L based W3300 series Xeon processors for LGA4189. In addition to the new DX-4189 coolers, the NM-i4189 mounting kit allows Noctua DX-3647 and TR4-SP3 series coolers to be installed on LGA4189.

"DX line CPU coolers have become a default choice in premium grade quiet cooling solutions for Intel Xeon processors", says Roland Mossig (Noctua CEO). "The latest revision for LGA4189 comprises 14, 12 and two 9 cm models, covering anything from spacious workstation cases to 4U rack-mount servers."

Intel Corporation today revealed one of the most detailed process and packaging technology roadmaps the company has ever provided, showcasing a series of foundational innovations that will power products through 2025 and beyond. In addition to announcing RibbonFET, its first new transistor architecture in more than a decade, and PowerVia, an industry-first new backside power delivery method, the company highlighted its planned swift adoption of next-generation extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), referred to as High Numerical Aperture (High NA) EUV. Intel is positioned to receive the first High NA EUV production tool in the industry.

"Building on Intel's unquestioned leadership in advanced packaging, we are accelerating our innovation roadmap to ensure we are on a clear path to process performance leadership by 2025," Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said during the global "Intel Accelerated" webcast. "We are leveraging our unparalleled pipeline of innovation to deliver technology advances from the transistor up to the system level. Until the periodic table is exhausted, we will be relentless in our pursuit of Moore's Law and our path to innovate with the magic of silicon."

Intel Corporation today reported second-quarter 2021 financial results. "There's never been a more exciting time to be in the semiconductor industry. The digitization of everything continues to accelerate, creating a vast growth opportunity for us and our customers across core and emerging business areas. With our scale and renewed focus on both innovation and execution, we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on this opportunity, which I believe is merely the beginning of what will be a decade of sustained growth across the industry," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. "Our second-quarter results show that our momentum is building, our execution is improving, and customers continue to choose us for leadership products."

Lenovo today announced the next generation of its family of entry-level desktop workstations - the ThinkStation P350 Tower, Small Form Factor (SFF) and Tiny. This trio of workstations hosts a technology upgrade - each one is equipped with support for PCIe Gen 4 for faster access to cutting-edge storage technologies, as well as enhanced professional graphics support. This latest generation of desktop workstations becomes Lenovo's most powerful entry-level offering and delivers a complete package of size options that can scale across a variety of industries and their respective workflows. From engineering and architecture, to finance, STEM/higher education and medical, these new desktop workstations offer versatile, flexible and ISV-certified performance at whatever size is best suited for users' needs and working environment.

Built with the latest high-performance Intel Core or Xeon processors with support up to 11th Gen Intel Core or Intel Xeon W processors, the ThinkStation P350 Tower and SFF are tailored for mission-critical tasks that require superior reliability and powerful performance. Both the Tower and SFF also offer NVIDIA RTX professional graphics, with the Tower now able to support up to the NVIDIA RTX A5000 graphics card. In addition to the 500 W power supply, the tower chassis now boasts a new 750 W PSU option - enabling high-end GPU users with the power needed to tackle sophisticated workflows. The ThinkStation P350 Tiny is the industry's smallest workstation at less than 1L and offers uncompromising performance within a form factor 96% smaller than a traditional desktop. Powered by 11th Gen Intel Core processors, it is uniquely qualified for enabling OEM solutions, and can be used as a host for like-local remote workstation power.