IBASE, a global leader in the manufacture of embedded computing and IIoT solutions, launches its new IB990 PICMG 1.3 full-size CPU card. The board supports the latest 7th/6th Generation Intel Xeon/Core i7/i5/i3 processors with speeds up to 4.0GHz. Based on the chipset family formerly known as Skylake, Intel C236 and Q170 Express chipsets, the high-performance IB990 SBC is built with two DIMM sockets to support DDR4 2133 MHz memory modules with up to 32GB in total and six superfast SATA III ports featuring RAID 0/1/5/10 and 6 Gb/s speed.

As a perfect solution for control systems in factory automation and other industrial applications, IB990 is designed for compute, data and graphics intensive applications and enables up to three independent displays via DVI-I, VGA and DVI-D interface. This long-life single board computer incorporates a rich set of I/O connectivity including two Gigabit Ethernet, four COM, two USB 2.0 and three USB 3.0 ports, plus a Mini PCI-E expansion socket for optional wireless modules. Additionally, the IB990 takes advantage of Intel AMT 11.0 for remote management and powering-on functionalities.

The following is an opinion editorial provided by Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of Intel Corporation. At Intel, we have an optimistic and pragmatic view of artificial intelligence's (AI) impact on society, jobs and daily life that will mimic other profound transformations - from the industrial to the PC revolutions. Our belief is that AI will bring significant new opportunities to transform business - from retail to healthcare to manufacturing - and have an immensely positive impact on society.

AI will make the impossible possible: advancing research on cancer, Parkinson's disease and brain disorders; helping to find missing children; and furthering scientific efforts in climate change, space exploration and oceanic research. To drive AI innovation, Intel is making strategic investments spanning technology, R&D and partnerships with business, government, academia and community groups. We are deeply committed to unlocking the promise of AI: conducting research on neuromorphic computing, exploring new architectures and learning paradigms. We have also invested in startups like Mighty AI, Data Robot and Lumiata through our Intel Capital portfolio and have invested more than $1 billion in companies that are helping to advance artificial intelligence.

In a response to AMD's current uptake in the consumer, HEDT and server markets with its vertical slice of the Zen architecture, Intel has started rebranding their products and image, changing product names and placement in a bid to increase the "freshness" factor of its offerings. E5 and E7 Xeons are gone, with the introduction of a metallic naming scheme: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum are now Intel's Xeon products, and Xeon-W takes the spot as Intel's workstation-oriented product stack. They do this by being - essentially - a conversion of Intel's Core i9 X299 family of processors towards the professional market with inclusion of professional-geared features. And as is usual with Intel, a new chipset - C422 - is needed in order for these to properly function.

The new Xeon-W product family will still make use of the LGA 2066 socket, bringing with them ECC and vPro support. The Xeon-W CPU family will feature 4 to 18 cores, support up to 512GB of ECC RDIMM/LRDIMM memory, support dual 512-bit FMAs, and peak clocks of 4 GHz base and 4.5 GHz Turbo. All the parts will support 48 PCIe 3.0 lanes from the processor,and CPUs in the Xeon-W stack are rated at 140W TDP: with exception of the quad cores, which come in at at 120W. Xeon-W processors only support Turbo Boost 2.0, instead of their Core i9 counterparts' Turbo 3.0.

GIGABYTE is gearing up for the release of the first GPU-supporting server based on Intel's Skylake Purley architecture. Leveraging the latter's scalability - which can be applied across compute, network and storage applications - GIGABYTE has committed its design expertise to a high-performance system with GPU-focused, OCP-based and other add-on functionality. This server adopts Intel's new product family - officially named the 'Intel Xeon Scalable' and its increased I/O options to deliver a truly high-performance, flexible system.

GIGABYTE's new system takes advantage of the performance benefits that Intel has built in to target a range of segments and created a system that meets HPC needs.

Today, Microsoft announced a new framework that enables businesses to adopt blockchain technology for increased enterprise privacy and security, and named Intel as a key hardware and software development partner. As part of this collaboration, Microsoft, Intel and other blockchain technology leaders will build a new enterprise-targeted blockchain framework - called the Coco Framework - that integrates Intel Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX) to deliver improved transaction speed, scale and data confidentiality to enterprises. This first-of-its-kind innovation accelerates the enterprise readiness of blockchain technology, allowing developers to create flexible and more secure enterprise blockchain applications that can be easily managed by businesses.

Today, Intel announces major data center storage advances, reiterating Intel's memory technology leadership. The new technologies advance data center storage and deliver innovative solutions to meet the challenges presented by the growing reliance on data. They include:

• "Ruler" form factor for Intel SSDs, an all-new solid state drive form factor enabling up to 1PB of storage in a 1U server rack in the future.
• The world's most advanced dual port portfolio: Intel Optane technology dual port SSDs and Intel 3D NAND dual port SSDs for mission-critical applications.
• An updated SATA family of SSDs for data center, targeted at HDD replacement.

"We are in the midst of an era of major data center transformation, driven by Intel. These new "ruler" form factor SSDs and dual port SSDs are the latest in a long line of innovations we've brought to market to make storing and accessing data easier and faster, while delivering more value to customers," said Bill Leszinske, Intel vice president, Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group (NSG), and director, strategic planning, marketing and business development. "Data drives everything we do - from financial decisions to virtual reality gaming, and from autonomous driving to machine learning - and Intel storage innovations like these ensure incredibly quick, reliable access to that data."

Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced its 32GB, 16GB and 8GB Server Premier DDR4-2666 Registered DIMMs have received validation on the Intel Purley Platform, featuring the Intel Xeon Scalable processor family (formerly known as "Skylake-SP"). A link to the validation page can be found here. This validation also marks the launch of Kingston's new Server Premier product line, which is focused on the latest server architectures making their debut in 2017. Kingston's new Server Premier builds on a legacy of class-leading server memory quality that target system builders, SMB and data centres with a fully locked build solution for guaranteed consistency.

Kingston's Purley-validated Server Premier modules are specifically engineered to unleash the power of Intel's new six-channel server microarchitecture, without memory frequency clock down restrictions experienced in previous platforms. At 2666MT/s - the next-generation performance frequency for DDR4 memory - each DIMM provides peak bandwidth of 21.3GB/s. When grouped for multi-channel performance, this provides a significant boost in performance for today's memory intensive server applications.

Intel has recently updated documentation on their available list of processors based on the 7th generation of the Core Family. These new Kaby Lake-based CPUs will further flesh-out Intel's offerings in both the desktop, laptop, and professional segments with new entries in the Core i3, Kaby Lake-U, and Xeon E3 lines of processors.

The new Core i3 processors make use of the S-0 stepping, instead of the B-0 stepping of previously-released processors. The additions are comprised of the i3-7340 (4.2 GHz, 4 MB cache, 51 W TDP); i3-7320T (3.6 GHz, 4MB cache, 35 W TDP); i3-7120 (4 GHz, 3 MB cache, 51 W TDP); and the i3-7120T (3.5 GHz, 3 MB cache, 35 W TDP.) On the laptop side of the equation, Intel is introducing four new processors: the Core i3-7007U (2 cores, 4 threads, 2.1 GHz, 3 MB cache); the Core i3-7110U (2 cores, 4 threads, 2.6 GHz, 3 MB cache); the Core i5-7210U (2 cores, 4 threads, 2.5 GHz base, 3.3 GHz Turbo, 3 MB cache); and the Core i7-7510U (2 cores, 4 threads, 2.7 GHz base, 3.7 GHz Turbo, 4 MB cache.) Lastly, Intel is adding the new E3-1285 v6 Xeon to its lineup. This one brings increased clock speeds (4.1 GHz base, 4.5 GHz Turbo) with Intel's HD P630 integrated graphics, increasing the TDP by 19 W ( to 91 W) compared to the already existing Xeon E3-1275 v6 - for a 300 MHz clock speed increase. This Xeon should be the new highest-end processor for the iMac, which should place its pricing above the $612 mark previously held by the Xeon E3-1280 v6.

So, yes, Intel, I think the AMD engineers who have developed the Zen architecture from the ground-up would take issue with that. Especially when AMD's "Glued-together" dies actually wipe the proverbial floor with the blue company's chips in power-performance ratios, and deliver much better multi-threaded performance than Intel's offerings. Not bad for a "Glued-together" solution, I'd say.

Our resident W1zzard had this to say regarding AMD's latest CPUs: "The SenseMi power-management system seems to be working well in idle, with the 8-core machine drawing the same amount of power as Intel's quad-core "Kaby Lake" machine." And "At stock speeds, the energy-efficiency of Ryzen is truly phenomenal. Prime95 loads all cores and threads on the chip, and the Ryzen ends up with as much power draw as the quad-core Intel i7-7700K. The high power draw result of the overclocked chip is due to the increased voltage needed to achieve stable operation." And let's not forget this: This is epic. We're assuming you've sifted through our game-test results before seeing this page, and so you'll find that the gaming power draw of the 8-core Ryzen makes Intel's quad-core i7-7700K look bad. Power draw is as much as 30W lesser! Ryzen is hands down the most energy-efficient performance CPU AMD ever made, and easily outclasses Intel's 14 nm "leadership." Good show."

GIGABYTE today announced its latest generation of servers based on Intel's Skylake Purley architecture. This new generation brings a wealth of new options in scalability - across compute, network and storage - to deliver solutions for any application, from the enterprise to the data center to HPC. (Jump ahead to system introductions).

This server series adopts Intel's new product family - officially named the 'Intel Xeon Scalable family' and utilizes its ability to meet the increasingly diverse requirements of the industry, from entry-level HPC to large scale clusters.. The major development in this platform is around the improved features and functionality at both the host and fabric levels. These enable performance improvements - both natively on chip and for future extensibility through compute, network and storage peripherals. In practical terms, these new CPUs will offer up to 28 cores, and 48 PCIe lanes per socket.

Intel today launched its new Intel Xeon Scalable processors, providing businesses with breakthrough performance to handle compute-hungry tasks including real-time analytics, virtualized infrastructure and high-performance computing. Today's launch marks the greatest set of data center and network processor advancements in a decade.

"Data center and network infrastructure is undergoing massive transformations to support emerging use cases like precision medicine, artificial intelligence and agile network services paving the path to 5G," said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the Intel Data Center Group. "Intel Xeon Scalable processors represent the biggest data center advancement in a decade."

A critical flaw was discovered in the way Intel implemented its simultaneous multi-threading technology, HyperThreading, on "Skylake" and "Kaby Lake" processors. Being a micro-architecture specific flaw, this could affect all implementations, from low-power mobile chips, to mainstream desktop, high-end desktop, and perhaps even enterprise-segment Xeon processors. At this time, there are no security implications of this flaw.

Intel chronicled this flaw in its micro-architecture errata "SKZ7/SKW144/SKL150/SKX150/SKZ7/KBL095/KBW095," and described it as follows: "Under complex micro-architectural conditions, short loops of less than 64 instructions that use AH, BH, CH or DH registers as well as their corresponding wider register (e.g. RAX, EAX or AX for AH) may cause unpredictable system behavior. This can only happen when both logical processors on the same physical processor are active." As an implication, Intel goes on to note that Due to this erratum, the system may experience unpredictable system behavior."

Apparently, AMD's nomenclature of its flagship Ryzen Threadripper won't look like years-of-birth of today's gamers after all. The flagship 16-core part will bear the model name Ryzen Threadripper 1950X (and not the previously-reported 1998X). This chip was put through GeekBench 4.1.0, on an ASRock X399 Professional Gaming, paired with 16 GB of DDR4-2133 MHz memory. Whether it's dual-channel or quad-channel, is not known at this point. What is known, however, is that 2133 MHz isn't the best memory frequency for Ryzen; and paired with quad-channel DDR4-3200, one could expect the best possible performance. The 1950X was clocked at 3.40 GHz for this test, which probably is its final nominal clock speed, after all.

The Ryzen Threadripper 1950X sample scored 4,167 single-thread performance, and 24,539 points in multi-threaded performance. To put these numbers into perspective, an Intel Xeon E5-2697A v4 16-core/32-thread processor based on the "Broadwell" architecture scores 30,450 points in multi-threaded performance, even if single-thread performance is as low as 3,651 points. Perhaps the memory setup or SMT isn't optimally set for the Threadripper chip. Among the other Threadripper SKUs AMD plans to launch on July 27 are the 12-core/24-thread Ryzen Threadripper 1920X and 1920 (non-X).

Apple today gave a sneak peek of iMac Pro, an entirely new workstation-class product line designed for pro users with the most demanding workflows. The all-new iMac Pro, with its gorgeous 27-inch Retina 5K display, up to 18-core Xeon processors and up to 22 Teraflops of graphics computation, is the most powerful Mac ever made. Featuring a stunning new space gray enclosure, iMac Pro packs incredible performance for advanced graphics editing, virtual reality content creation and real-time 3D rendering. iMac Pro is scheduled to ship in December starting at $4,999 (US).

In addition to the new iMac Pro, Apple is working on a completely redesigned, next-generation Mac Pro architected for pro customers who need the highest-end, high-throughput system in a modular design, as well as a new high-end pro display. "We're thrilled to give developers and customers a sneak peek at iMac Pro. This will be our fastest and most powerful Mac ever, which brings workstation-class computing to iMac for the first time," said John Ternus, Apple's vice president of Hardware Engineering. "We reengineered the whole system and designed an entirely new thermal architecture to pack extraordinary performance into the elegant, quiet iMac enclosure our customers love - iMac Pro is a huge step forward and there's never been anything like it."

On the back of impressive performance, yield, and cost metric for AMD's market-warping Ryzen and server-shaking EPYC processors, securities firm Rosenblatt Securities' Hans Mosesmann has affirmed a "Buy" rating for AMD's stock, while saddling Intel with a seldom-seen "Sell". All in all, there have been a number of changes in Intel's market ratings; there seems to be a downgrade trend towards either "Hold" or "Sell" scenarios compared to the usual "Buy" ratings given by hedge funds and financial analysts - ratings which are undoubtedly affected (at least in part) by AMD's Ryzen and EPYC execution.

Intel today unveiled significant performance advances in its upcoming Intel Xeon Processor Scalable family. At the SAP Sapphire NOW conference, Intel showed up to 1.59x higher Intel Xeon processor performance running in-memory SAP HANA workloads over the generation it replaces, demonstrating what the new products will deliver to help meet the increasingly complex demands of big-data, in-memory workloads in the modern data center.

Diane Bryant, group president of the Data Center Group at Intel, outlined how the Intel Xeon Processor Scalable family - available in mid-2017 - will provide enhanced performance to in-memory applications like SAP HANA. This will provide customers faster time-to-insight and allow organizations to rapidly respond to change.

The Intel Xeon Processor Scalable Family is the new foundation for secure, agile, multi-cloud data centers. It represents the biggest platform advancements in this decade. The processor family is architected for exceptional workload-optimized performance and hardware-enhanced security. Designed for trusted data service delivery, the processor family is fueled by significant leaps in I/O, memory, storage and network technologies.

Sampling today, and with broad availability in mid-2017, the Intel Xeon Processor Scalable family has the design flexibility to thrive across common applications and mission critical operations or to harness actionable insights from advanced real-time analytics and emerging imperatives like artificial intelligence. This agility enables customers to seize new business opportunities from our increasingly data-fueled smart and connected world.

Synology today launched FlashStation FS2017, a high-performance and scalable NAS designed for enterprise usage. Capable of handling over 90,000 IOPS in 4K random writing, FS2017 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.

FS2017 is powered by an 8-core Intel Xeon D processor together with 16 Gigabytes of DDR4 ECC RDIMM that is expandable up to 128GB. The cutting-edge hardware delivers high performance and throughput even with multitasking and multiple virtual machines hosted. Four Gigabit ports allow simple plug-and-play into existing RJ45 based networks, ensuring continual network uptime. For higher bandwidth applications, the dual 10GBASE-T ports with the option of an additional 10GbE / 25GbE / 40GbE NIC can maximize throughput and meet data-intensive requirements.

Intel is preparing a new nomenclature for its Xeon line of enterprise processors based on core counts. The Xeon Bronze-3000 series will consist of chips with less than 10 cores, Xeon Silver-4000 series with 10 to 12 cores, Xeon Gold-6000 series with 14 to 22 cores, and the top-dog Xeon Platinum-8000 series with 24 to 28 cores. The company will address a variety of enterprise workstation and server markets with these chips. All chips in this lineup will be built in the new LGA-2066 package, and the Xeon Bronze and Xeon Silver parts are confirmed to be based on the "Skylake" microarchitecture.

What is also characteristic of these chips is their vast memory controller with six memory channels, and support for three DIMMs per channel. The top-tier Xeon Platinum-8000 series 28-core chip features 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache per core, and 38.5 MB of shared L3 cache. Its TDP is rated at 208W, and it will be built on Intel's 14 nm process. The 28-core parts come with clock speeds under 2.50 GHz. The 34 Xeon Gold and Xeon Platinum series processors Intel plans to launch over the year are tabled below.

HP Inc. today announced its most secure and manageable HP ZBook Mobile Workstations to-date. The new solutions-packed devices include award-winning display technology, 3D graphics and server-grade processing power -- all in a compact, mobile design. With its new workstation line up, HP continues to offer world-class innovation to power filmmakers, designers, artists, explorers and other visionary thinkers.

"As a longtime partner to the creative industry, Z Workstations have earned their position as the ultimate innovative and reliable technology for creators," said Josh Peterson, vice president of product management for Z Workstations. "Our fourth generation ZBook Mobile Workstations are the most secure and manageable mobile workstations in the industry. By protecting the intellectual property of digital creators everywhere, HP enables the creative industry to focus on bringing their best work to-life without the worry of IP theft or breaches."

For some users, it's been a long time coming. For others, it just meant that Apple had given up entirely on the desktop ecosystem, choosing to focus on its "mainstream luxury" approach towards selling phones with a BOM of $219 for $1000. Most others, though, will probably look at this update as more of a passing shot than an actually thought-out product development.

For now, Apple is going to update the innards of its Mac Pro line with some pretty interesting (if expectable) hardware: the $2,999 model sees a two-core bump from the quad-core Intel Xeon E5 3.7 GHz processor towards a six-core Intel Xeon E5 3.5 GHz. The same path will be followed by the $3,999 model, bumping towards an eight-core Intel Xeon E5 3 GHz processor from the six-core Intel Xeon E5 3.7 GHz processor that just kept on giving since 2013. Both models have also been updated with dual AMD FirePro D500 and D700 GPUs. The $2,999 model also sees an increase in its available memory, from 12GB of DDR3-1866 memory to 16GB.

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.