Today, Intel announced the availability of the Intel Xeon processor E3-1200 v6 product family, which includes eight new versions that provide key improvements in processor speed, enhanced memory capabilities, hardware-enhanced security and reliability features with support for the latest Intel graphics.

Designed for entry-level servers used by small-business customers and powering entry-level workstations used by business professionals worldwide, the Intel Xeon processor E3-1200 v6 product family supports the increasing workloads and workflows of today's server and workstation customers, delivering greater business intelligence, acceleration and agility.

Microsoft is looking to reduce costs in its Azure cloud computing platforms for tasks like search, storage, machine learning and big data. And after having developed a version of Windows for servers that use ARM processors, in a joint work with Qualcomm and Cavium, Microsoft seems to also be looking forward to leave its dependency on Intel products as nothing but a memory. Microsoft's ARM server design, dubbed Project Olympus, looks to hardware innovations so as to reduce costs, boosting competitiveness and flexibility in regards to other big players in the cloud space, like Amazon and Alphabet. That the design is open source is also a boon to other businesses and Microsoft partners.


Though the design isn't "deployed into production yet (...) that is the next logical step," said Jason Zander, vice president of Microsoft's Azure cloud division. "This is a significant commitment on behalf of Microsoft. We wouldn't even bring something (...) if we didn't think this was a committed project and something that's part of our roadmap."

AMD today unveiled the "Naples" enterprise processor, and it is big. The chip could mark AMD's return to competitive enterprise CPUs after years. The first "Naples" based part has some staggering specifications - 32 CPU cores spread across eight CCX units, SMT enabling 64 threads, an octa-channel (yes, eight channels) DDR4 integrated memory controller, an industry-leading 64-lane PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex, and AMD's new Infinity Fabric interconnect, which lets it talk to the neighboring CPU, in a 2P system. The IMC supports up to 2 TB of memory.

AMD will competitively price "Naples" against Intel's Xeon E5-2600 series 2P chips, offering more cores, wider memory interfaces, more memory support, and more PCIe lanes. AMD will tap into the good energy-efficiency of its "Zen" architecture to clock these chips competitively higher than Intel chips, to churn out more overall performance. AMD is scheduled to launch the first processors based on the "Naples" silicon, within Q2-2017.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the new business-class TS-1685 desktop 16-bay Xeon D Super NAS that supports twelve 3.5" hard drives and four 2.5" SSDs, provides six M.2 SSD slots, and features a powerful Intel Xeon D processor to deliver outstanding performance with high-capacity storage. Designed to optimize enterprise IT infrastructure, the TS-1685 comes with three PCIe slots that support 10GbE/40GbE NIC, PCIe NVMe SSD, graphics cards, and USB 3.1 expansion cards to provide a complete business-ready storage solution incorporating security and scalability.

The TS-1685 leverages the high-performance Intel Xeon D multi-core processor and up to 128 GB DDR4 RAM to reach read speeds up to 2,339 MB/s with a dual 10GbE configuration. The dedicated four 2.5" SSD slots and six M.2 SATA 6Gb/s SSD slots excel in cache acceleration, and coupled with Qtier Technology the TS-1685 can continuously optimize storage efficiency across M.2 SSD, SSD, high-capacity SATA drives, and the optional PCIe NVMe SSD.

Intel today extended the performance capabilities of the Intel Xeon processor E7-8800 v4 product family with the addition of a high-performance SKU in the processor family's Advanced SKU stack. The new SKU delivers the processor family's highest performance to handle the most demanding, mission-critical enterprise workloads. Businesses can use Intel Xeon processor E7-8894 v4-based servers to derive faster insights from the unprecedented amount of data being generated to create new services and improve customer experiences.

The Intel Xeon processor E7-8894 v4 combines high memory capacity and compute performance to deliver quicker results and improved productivity. The processor is targeted at scale-up workloads such as large databases, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), online transaction processing (OLT) and in-memory analytics. The ability to scale-up allows more resources (more sockets and more memory) to be added to a single node image.

Hot on the heels of AMD Ryzen, Intel is planning to launch the pro-consumer targeted Xeon Gold line of processors. The company is reportedly "freaked out" at the cost/performance of AMD Ryzen R7-1800X in creative productivity applications, and is preparing a new line of processors targeting that niche of the market, which uses MacPro desktops and media production workstations using HEDT processors, but needs a bit of "reliability." The Xeon Gold series will be based on the 14 nm "Skylake-EP" silicon, and will feature up to 18 CPU cores. The first model in the series is the Xeon Gold 6150.

The Xeon Gold 6150 features 18 CPU cores, with HyperThreading enabling 36 logical CPUs. Intel increased the L2 cache amount per core to 1 MB, from 256 KB found on other implementations of the "Skylake" architecture. The chip features 25,344 KB (24.75 MB) of shared L3 cache. The core clock speed is 2.70 GHz, with a maximum Turbo Boost frequency of 3.70 GHz. The chip features a quad-channel DDR4 memory interface. Going by its specs, the Xeon Gold 6150 will clearly occupy a higher market segment than the Ryzen R7-1800X, but could lure orders from the likes of Apple, for its next-generation MacPro workstations.

Synology Inc. today launched DiskStation DS3617xs, a 12-bay NAS server scalable up to 36 drives. It delivers high performance at over 2,358 MB/s reading and fast deployments to support large-scale businesses. Equipped with a quad-core Intel Xeon-D 2.2 GHz CPU that bursts up to 2.7 GHz, DS3617xs delivers stunning performance at over 2,358 MB/s sequential throughput reading and 406,760 IOPS reading under a RAID 5 configuration with 10GbE Link Aggregation enabled. DS3617xs comes with one PCIe 3.0 slot that supports a high-speed Network Interface Card (NIC).

"We've seen strong interest and demand from our customers in this business-ready desktop NAS model for its painless deployment and flexible scalability." said Michael Wang, Product Manager at Synology Inc. "This time we've doubled the default RAM capacity of DS3617xs to 16GB and enable upgradability up to 48GB in total for businesses to utilize."

Synology today launched FlashStation FS3017, the company's pioneer product within an entirely new all-flash series. Capable of handling over 200,000 IOPS in 4k random writing with RDMA technology enabled, the FS3017 is perfect for big data analysis, video post-production, virtualization, and handling any demanding database application that requires high IOPS and low latency at the same time.

FS3017 features dual Intel Xeon 6-core processors, 64GB DDR4 ECC RDIMM (expandable up to 512GB), dual built-in 10GBase-T ports, and supports optional 10GbE / 25GbE / 40GbE NICs, guaranteeing stable performance in multitasking and data throughput. FS3017 is also compatible with various SATA/SAS SSD brands, offering users more flexibility with their budgets.

Intel is preparing their Skylake-EP Xeon E5 processor lineup for launch in mid-2017. And judging by the leaks regarding their next top-of-the-line processors in the server market, the Xeon E5-2699 V5 looks like Intel's response to AMD's expected Naples server platform. The leak should, naturally, be taken with a grain of salt, since the leaked chip appears to not yet be a finalized version of Intel's silicon. If you trust the source, you can secure one of these engineering samples for the tidy sum of ¥ 26500 (around $3845).

Intel Corporation today announced a range of new products, technologies and investments from the edge to the data center to help expand and accelerate the growth of artificial intelligence (AI). Intel sees AI transforming the way businesses operate and how people engage with the world. Intel is assembling the broadest set of technology options to drive AI capabilities in everything from smart factories and drones to sports, fraud detection and autonomous cars.

At an industry gathering led by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, Intel shared how both the promise and complexities of AI require an extensive set of leading technologies to choose from and an ecosystem that can scale beyond early adopters. As algorithms become complex and required data sets grow, Krzanich said Intel has the assets and know-how required to drive this computing transformation. In a blog Krzanich said: "Intel is uniquely capable of enabling and accelerating the promise of AI. Intel is committed to AI and is making major investments in technology and developer resources to advance AI for business and society."

At the SC16 (Super Computing 2016) conference, Intel introduced its new Intel Xeon E5-2699A v4, which is a newer, faster version of the existing Broadwell E5-2699 v4. The "newer, faster" bit basically amounts to an increased base (from 2.2GHz to 2.4GHz) and boost clock (from 3.4GHz to 3.6GHz). Like its predecessor, the Xeon E5-2699A features 22 cores and 55MB of L3 cache, and the company cited vague improvements to the now-mature 14nm process that which amount to a 4.8% gain in LINPACK performance - which can surely be attributed almost exclusively to its clockspeed increase (not unlike the expected performance differential between Intel's current Skylake and upcoming Kaby Lake architectures). The E5-2699A v4 carries an MSRP of $4,938, which marks an eye-watering 20% increase over the $4,115 of its 200-MHz slower predecessor.

TYAN, an industry-leading server platform design manufacturer and subsidiary of MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation, is showcasing a wide range of HPC server platforms optimized for enterprise, storage and data center applications at SC16 this week in Salt Lake City's Salt Palace Convention Center.

TYAN's comprehensive HPC platforms span a wide range of hardware specifications. The Intel Xeon E7-based, 4U quad-socket FT76-B7922 offers a memory capacity of 6TB and supports up to 4x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for the most demanding HPC users; the Intel Xeon E5-based, 4U dual-socket FT77C-B7079 supports up to 8x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for highly parallelized application deployment, the 2U dual-socket TA80-B7071 supports up to 4x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for large-scale production deployment in various high performance computing segments; and the 1U dual-socket GA80-B7081 supports up to 3x Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for ISVs, universities, and small businesses looking for parallelized application development or proof of concept solution deployment.

News and specifications about Intel's upcoming Kaby Lake-based desktop CPUs are thin, but a recent leak has made it possible to discern at least some details, due to an Intel product change notification (PCN) document.

A PCN is a document issued by a manufacturer to inform customers about a change to a mass-produced product or its manufacturing process. In this PCN, Intel details a new factory in Vietnam which will work in order to "ensure a continuous supply of the Select Intel Xeon Processor E3-1205, Intel Core i5-7400 Processor, Intel Core i5-7400T Processor, Intel Core i5-7500 Processor, Intel Core i5-7500T Processor, Intel Core i5-7600 Processor, Intel Core i5-7600K Processor, Intel Core i5-7600T Processor, Intel Core i7-7700 Processor, Intel Core i7-7700T Processor and Intel Core i7-7700K Processor products".

Intel is preparing a broad lineup of enterprise CPUs based on the upcoming 14 nm "Kaby Lake" silicon, besides the first wave of its desktop lineup, with no less than 8 quad-core SKUs. What makes the lineup of the Xeon E3-1200 V6 family more comprehensive than previous generations is the fact that some of the SKUs feature integrated graphics. Predecessors of the E3-1200 V6 series generally lack integrated graphics. Intel denoted parts that feature integrated graphics with Xeon E3-###5 V6, and endowed them with the GT2 graphics available on the "Kaby Lake" common silicon shared between the Xeon E3-1200 V6 and 7th generation Core series.

All eight SKUs launched by Intel are quad-core and feature 8 MB of L3 cache, six of them feature HyperThreading. Three of the SKUs feature integrated graphics. The SKUs without integrated graphics have 74W TDP rating, the ones with it have 78W TDP rating. Some of the notable SKUs include the E3-1280 V6, with 3.90 GHz nominal clocks, E3-1275 V6 with 3.70 GHz clocks and GT2 integrated graphics; and E3-1225 V6, featuring 3.30 GHz clocks, and integrated graphics. The Xeon E3-1200 V6 series processors will be built in the LGA1151 package, and will be compatible with the C232 and C236 chipset motherboards. The company could launch these chips by the end of 2016.

NVIDIA accused Intel of cheating in its ISC 2016 presentation, particularly in a performance-related slide, in which it claimed that its "Knights Landing" Xeon Phi HPC processor provides faster training of neural nets than NVIDIA "Maxwell" GPUs. In a slide, Intel claimed that a Xeon Phi HPC processor card is 2.3 times faster at training deep-learning neural nets, and 38 percent better scaling across nodes, than NVIDIA "Maxwell" GPUs, which triggered a swift response from the GPU maker, which made significant investments in deep-learning technologies over the past three years.

NVIDIA argued that Intel is using the classic technique of running outdated benchmarks to test its neural net training speeds. The company says that if Intel used the latest version of the same benchmark (Caffe AlexNet), the "Maxwell" GPU will be found to be 30 percent faster than the Xeon Phi at training neural nets. NVIDIA also notes that "Maxwell" is only its previous-generation part, and a "Pascal" based HPC processor would easily be 90 percent faster than the Xeon Phi. More importantly, NVIDIA notes that Intel compared 32 of its new Xeon Phi servers against four-year-old Nvidia Kepler K20 servers being used in ORNL's Titan supercomputer. The latest "Pascal" GPUs leverate NVLink to scale up to 128 GPUs, providing the fastest deep-learning solutions money can buy.

ASUS today unveiled the X99-E 10G WS workstation motherboard. Although based on the X99 Express chipset, this board supports Intel Xeon E5-1600 and E5-2600 (v3 and v4) processors, besides Core i7 "Haswell-E" and "Broadwell-E" processors in the LGA2011v3 package. The board's eight DDR4 DIMM slots support up to 128 GB of quad-channel DDR4 memory. The board is built in the SSI-CEB form-factor (305 mm x 267 mm). The board features seven PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, and uses PLX PEX-8747 x48 bridge chips to provide either two x16 slots with direct wiring to the CPU, or four x16 slots running at full x16 bandwidth, or seven x16 slots in x16/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8/x8 configuration.

Storage connectivity includes one 32 Gb/s U.2 port, a 32 Gb/s M.2 slot, and a total of ten SATA 6 Gb/s ports. The board derives its name from support for 10 Gbps Ethernet, and features a pair of 10 Gbps connections driven by an Intel X550-AT2 controller. Other modern connectivity includes two USB 3.1 ports (of which one is type-C), eight USB 3.0 ports, and 8-channel HD audio with a 115 dBA SNR CODEC. The board draws power from a 24-pin ATX, a 6-pin PCIe, and two 8-pin EPS connectors, and uses an 8-phase VRM to condition power for the CPU. ASUS didn't reveal pricing.

Giada Technology, the industry leader in embedded systems and expert in server technology, today officially announces the N60E-O compact server for warm cloud storage applications powered by Intel Xeon-D processors which offer scalable performance on a tiny form factor.

Balancing value, performance and integration, the Giada N60E-O features an onboard Broadwell-DE based Xeon-D processor which is intended for entry-level enterprise storage applications particularly warm data storage. The Xeon D-1540 features 8-cores with 16 threads with an impressive TDP rating of 45W offering a great balance of performance and power draw making for a highly efficient setup.

Dramatic growth in the volume and variety of data is bringing unprecedented opportunities for businesses - healthcare to transportation, banking to manufacturing - to make new discoveries and to deliver improved services and customer experiences. The key opportunity is turning the massive amount of core business data plus new sources of unstructured data into actionable and timely insights. In fact, research is finding that companies that use data-driven insights are two times more likely to have top quartile financial performance and five times more likely to make decisions faster than their competition, so it is no surprise that many companies are investing in analytics.

The Intel Xeon processor E7-8800/4800 v4 families offer robust performance, the industry's largest memory capacity per socket 2, advanced reliability and hardware enhanced security for real-time analytics so that businesses can rapidly gain actionable insights from massive and complex data sets. They are optimal for scale-up platforms, delivering large in-memory computing for real-time analytics as well as data-intensive workloads such as online transaction processing (OLTP), supply chain management (SCM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), among others. The Intel Xeon processor E7 v4 family delivers up to 1.4 times higher performance, up to 10 times better performance for dollar and half the system power compared to IBM Power8-based solutions.

MSI, world leading in motherboards and most popular brand in the gaming market is pleased to announce two new C232 based motherboards, the E3 KRAIT GAMING V5 and E3M WORKSTATION V5. With the their ability to use the less expensive Intel Xeon CPUs make both models a promising solution for users who are looking to build a Xeon based gaming or workstation PC while demanding reliable and long term system stability.

More Reliable Platform of LGA1151
The Intel Xeon processors are designed for use in workstation, servers or datacenters which require high stability and reliability. The E3 KRAIT GAMINNG V5 and E3M WORKSTAION V5 motherboards support Intel E3-1200 v5 series processors with a lot of CPU power, lower cost and great level of stability. Moreover, these two motherboards support ECC memory, offering better compatibility & stability and catering to the industries preferred choice over general non-ECC DDR4 memory.

Crucial, a leading global brand of memory and storage upgrades, today announced the availability of two new offerings in its server memory product portfolio: 32 GB DDR4 VLP RDIMMs and 64 GB DDR4 LRDIMMs. With speeds of 2400 MT/s and engineered to enable higher densities by implementing a dual stack of 8 Gb DDR4 DRAM die to engineer a single 16 Gb component, these new DDR4 server memory modules allow for increased memory density, performance and bandwidth.

The 32 GB VLP RDIMMs are the highest density server memory modules Crucial offers for that module form factor, and are almost half the height (40 percent shorter) of a standard RDIMM module. These high density modules help enable memory dense systems like blade servers and microservers without compromising performance. Additionally, they can be installed at a 90-degree angle to the motherboard in these height-constrained systems, which enables better airflow to keep the system cool..

MAINGEAR, an award-winning PC system integrator of custom solutions, introduces the newest mobile powerhouse with the Pulse 15 Pro, its newest workstation laptop packed with an arsenal of cutting-edge components, including Intel's 6th Generation Core i7 or Xeon processors, NVIDIA Quadro M2000 graphics card and blazingly fast Samsung 950 Pro NVMe M.2 SSDs.

"The Pulse 15 Pro will offer even the most demanding creative professional, with incredible processing power, blazing speed and impeccable graphics performance," said Wallace Santos, CEO and Founder of MAINGEAR. "With 4K video so easily accessible, even some of the most powerful machines can 'hiccup' when rendering it, however we've built this new workstation to effortlessly power through it."

HP Inc. today announced a bold evolution and a series of updates to the world's first workstation all-in-one - the new HP Z1 G3 Workstation - combining the simplicity of an All-in-One design with performance typically found in traditional tower workstations.

Built for demanding users, the third generation HP Z1 Workstation is smaller, thinner and lighter delivering screaming performance at a great value.

• 47 percent smaller, 51 percent lighter and 21 percent less expensive than the previous generation.
• 23.6 inch diagonal anti-glare UHD 4K display for the outstanding visual clarity when working on graphic intensive projects.
• Intel Xeon processor options for powerful workstation-class processing technology for the most demanding applications.

MSI Computer Corp, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, today announced the availability of the WT72, the world's first professional NVIDIA VR Ready mobile workstation equipped with NVIDIA's newest mobile GPU, the Quadro M5500.

Designed for maximum performance, MSI's WT72 is powered by NVIDIA's Quadro M5500 GPU, Intel's 6th generation Core-i7 and Xeon processors, and up to 64 GB of DDR4 memory. The latest in professional graphics design technology, the Quadro M5500 is the world's fastest mobile GPU, delivering up to 35% performance increase over previous models, with 2,048 cores for optimum speed and power.

Intel Corporation today announced a range of new technologies, investments and industry collaborations aimed at making it easier to deploy agile and scalable clouds so businesses can deliver new services faster and drive revenue growth. Businesses want flexibility and choice in cloud deployment models to support innovation while maintaining control of their most strategic assets. Despite a willingness to invest in modern software-defined infrastructure (SDI), businesses find the prospect of doing so themselves to be complex and time-consuming.

Intel is easing the path with new processors, solid state drives and a range of industry collaborations to help businesses deliver new services at the scale and speed previously found only in the most advanced public clouds. "Enterprises want to benefit from the efficiency and agility of cloud architecture and on their own terms - using the public cloud offerings, deploying their own private cloud, or both," said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Center Group. "The result is pent-up demand for software-defined infrastructure. Intel is investing to mature SDI solutions and provide a faster path for businesses of all sizes to reap the benefits of the cloud."

Dell today announced new Virtual Reality-ready solutions that feature refined criteria for optimal VR experience, whether consuming or creating VR content. Dell has defined VR-ready solutions by three criteria:

• Minimum CPU, memory, and graphics requirements to support optimal VR viewing experiences;
• Graphics drivers that are qualified to work reliably with these solutions; and,
• Passing performance tests conducted by Dell using test criteria based on HMD (head-mounted display) suppliers, ISVs or 3rd party benchmarks where available.

Working closely with its hardware and software partners, Dell is formalizing its commitment to the future of VR by delivering solutions that are optimized for VR consumption and creation alongside ISV applications for professional customers.