The global server market, grappling with the impact of worldwide inflation, saw significant shifts in 2023. Server OEMs and CSPs revamped their investment strategies, resulting in cutbacks in both annual shipments and ODM production plans. TrendForce observes that as the server market continues to decline, demand for AI surges. These combined factors have had a domino effect, compressing the rollout of new server platforms across the board.

Forecasts predict that this year's shipments of server motherboards are expected to decline by a market of 6~7%. Concurrently, shipments of whole servers aren't faring much better, with a projected decrease of 5~6%.

Intel today released the latest version of the Arc GPU Graphics Drivers. Version 101.4644 WHQL comes with Game On (day-zero) optimization for "Madden NFL 24," and "Wayfinder." Among the issues fixed with this release include an application crash noticed with "Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection" when launching the game; a system hang noticed when waking up your desktop from sleep, needing you to cycle power; and an application crash observed with Blender 3.6 during render operations, when hardware ray tracing is enabled. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4644 WHQL

IBASE Technology Inc. (TPEx: 8050), a global leader in network appliances and embedded solutions, proudly announces the release of the INA8505 enterprise 1U edge server. Powered by the Intel Xeon D-2700 processor and offering versatile connectivity options, this state-of-the-art appliance is specifically designed to excel in demanding 5G Open vRAN & MEC applications such as real-time data analytics, autonomous vehicles, and smart city deployments. It enables full control over resource allocation in the RAN and MEC, and has the potential to seamlessly integrate AI capabilities to dynamically optimize network performance in real time at the edge of the 5G network infrastructure.

The INA8505 delivers unmatched performance, scalability, and efficiency with flexible storage, offering two SATA/NVMe 2.5" HDD/SSD slots, 2x M.2 (M-key) SATA/PCI-E storage slots, and one 16 GB/32 GB/64 GB eMMC. With an FHFL PCI-E (x16) Gen 4 (supports 75 W) and an FHFL PCI-E (x8) Gen 4 (supports 75 W) configurable as PCI-E (x16) Gen 4 double FHFL (supports 120 W), the INA8505 adapts effortlessly into different network environments and meet future demands for increased scalability. It boasts a rich array of I/O connectivity options, including a VGA port from BMC (Aspeed 2600, IPMI 2.0 support), two USB2.0 Type-A ports, an RJ45 console port, and four 25 GbE SFP28 ports, ensuring enhanced adaptability to various connectivity needs.

During the Aspen Security Forums 2023, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger spoke on the topic of semiconductors and national security. During his speech, Gelsinger mentioned that Intel should get the lion's share of the US$52 billion US CHIPS Act money, simply because Intel is a US company. In Gelsinger's opinion, it appears that TSMC and Samsung don't deserve as much, despite both companies manufacturing semiconductors for US companies, with Samsung already having a foundry in Texas, while TSMC is still struggling with the construction of its Arizona foundry.

Admittedly, Intel has far more foundries in the US, but it also seems like Gelsinger forgot about other foundries, such as GlobalFoundries, but also companies such as Micron, Texas Instruments, Qorvo, NXP, On Semi, Analog Devices and so forth that all own foundries that produce their own chips on US soil. We'd expect all these companies to be eyeing the CHIPS Act cash and without many of those companies, Intel wouldn't be able to sell any of its chips, as many of them produce much needed components that are used to build motherboards, laptops and what not. Gelsinger was obviously pointing fingers at the current US China trade war and how the export controls are causing concerns with regards to the global semiconductor business. As such, Gelsinger wants Intel to have fewer restrictions from the currently imposed trade regulations, largely due to China being some 25 to 30 percent of Intel's market, with Intel being busy expanding in the country. Make what you want of this, but it's clear that Gelsinger is expecting to eat the cake and have it at the same time. Video after the break.

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), the global leading motherboard, mini PC, notebook, mobile device, and smart solution provider, will attend Europe's largest and the most iconic consumer electronics trade show, IFA Berlin 2023, to exhibit a series of new laptops for education and business.

Optimize Cloud-Based Learning & Teaching: A New Series of Education Chromebooks Can Fulfill Teachers' and Students' Different Needs
After the world enters the post-pandemic era, there are enormous changes in both teaching and learning modes. Meanwhile, digital trend is arising. To meet various requirements from education fields, ECS launches the brand new SG20, SE40, and EP20 education PC series. These thin and ultraportable laptops feature rugged chassis certified by MIL-STD-810H tests. Equipped with Chrome OS, their battery life can last up to 10 hours. Besides, they support 4G LTE and Wi-Fi 6, which is ideal for remote learning.

Intel and Synopsys announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement to expand the companies' long-standing IP (intellectual property) and EDA (electronic design automation) strategic partnership with the development of a portfolio of IP on Intel 3 and Intel 18A for Intel's foundry customers. The availability of key IP on Intel advanced process nodes will create a more robust offering for new and existing Intel Foundry Services (IFS) customers.

"Marking another important step in our IDM 2.0 strategy, this transaction will foster a vibrant foundry ecosystem by allowing designers to fully realize the advantages of Intel 3 and Intel 18A process technologies and quickly bring differentiated products to market," said Stuart Pann, senior vice president and general manager of IFS. "Synopsys brings a strong track record of delivering high-quality IP to a broad customer base, and this agreement will help accelerate the availability of IP on advanced IFS nodes for mutual customers."

Intel's next-generation designs are nearing launch, and we are already getting information about the upcoming generations. Today, we have the information that Intel's Arrow Lake-S desktop/client implementations of the Arrow Lake family will feature as much as 3 MB of level two (L2) cache for each performance core. Currently, Intel's latest 13th-generation Raptor Lake and 14th-generation Raptor Lake Refresh feature 2 MB of L2 cache per performance core. However, the 15th generation Arrow Lake, scheduled for launch in 2024, will bump that up by 50% and reach 3 MB. Given that P-cores are getting a boost in capacity, we expect E-cores to do so as well, but at a smaller size.

Arrow Lake will utilize Lion Cove P-core microarchitecture, while the E-core design will be based on Skymont. Intel plans to use a 20A node for this CPU, and more details will be presented next year.

Intel has recently revealed a security vulnerability named Downfall (CVE-2022-40982) that impacts multiple generations of Intel processors. The vulnerability is linked to Intel's memory optimization feature, exploiting the Gather instruction, a function that accelerates data fetching from scattered memory locations. It inadvertently exposes internal hardware registers, allowing malicious software access to data held by other programs. The flaw affects Intel mainstream and server processors ranging from the Skylake to Rocket Lake microarchitecture. The entire list of affected CPUs is here. Intel has responded by releasing updated software-level microcode to fix the flaw. However, there's concern over the performance impact of the fix, potentially affecting AVX2 and AVX-512 workloads involving the Gather instruction by up to 50%.

Phoronix tested the Downfall mitigations and reported varying performance decreases on different processors. For instance, two Xeon Platinum 8380 processors were around 6% slower in certain tests, while the Core i7-1165G7 faced performance degradation ranging from 11% to 39% in specific benchmarks. While these reductions were less than Intel's forecasted 50% overhead, they remain significant, especially in High-Performance Computing (HPC) workloads. The ramifications of Downfall are not restricted to specialized tasks like AI or HPC but may extend to more common applications such as video encoding. Though the microcode update is not mandatory and Intel provides an opt-out mechanism, users are left with a challenging decision between security and performance. Executing a Downfall attack might seem complex, but the final choice between implementing the mitigation or retaining performance will likely vary depending on individual needs and risk assessments.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is delivering a high-throughput, low latency E3.S storage solutions supporting the industry's first PCIe Gen 5 drives and CXL modules to meet the demands of large AI Training and HPC clusters, where massive amounts of unstructured data must be delivered to the GPUs and CPUs to achieve faster results.

Supermicro's Petascale systems are a new class of storage servers supporting the latest industry standard E3.S (7.5 mm) Gen 5 NVMe drives from leading storage vendors for up to 256 TB of high throughput, low latency storage in 1U or up to a half petabyte in 2U. Inside, Supermicro's innovative symmetrical architecture reduced latency by ensuring the shortest signal paths for data and maximized airflow over critical components, allowing them to run at optimal speeds. With these new systems, a standard rack can now hold over 20 Petabytes of capacity for high throughput NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabrics) configurations, ensuring that GPUs remain saturated with data. Systems are available with either the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors or 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors.

Jon Peddie Research reports the growth of the global PC client-based CPU units market reached 53.6 million units in Q2'23, up 17%, and iGPU shipments increased by 14% to 49 million units. Year over year, iGPUs declined -29%.

Integrated GPUs will have a compound annual growth rate of 2.5% during 2022-2026 and reach an installed base of 4.8 billion units at the end of the forecast period. Over the next five years, the penetration of iGPUs in the PC will grow to reach a level of 98%.

Graphics cards are the most dynamic hardware components of the modern PC, in need of constant driver updates to keep them optimized for the latest games. Intel may be the newest on the block with discrete gaming GPUs, with its Arc A-series competing in the mid-range, but the company has a vast software engineering muscle that ensures a constant stream of driver updates for these GPUs regardless of their smaller market share compared to entrenched players NVIDIA and AMD. A part of keeping the drivers up-to-date and understanding the user-base to improve future generations of GPUs, involves data-collection from the existing users.

The updated installer of Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers lets users decide if they want the company to collect anonymous usage data from them. For those with the data-collection already opted in, the installer leaves the data-collection component untouched in the "typical" installation option, and presents it as an optional action item in the "Customize" installation option. For those that did not opt for data-collection, the "typical" installation option doesn't sneak the component in, but presents it as an unchecked optional item in the "Customize" screen. An older version of this article stated that the data-collection component, dubbed Computing Improvement Program (CIP), would install onto unsuspecting users' machines in the "typical" installation, disregarding their prior choices with the component. We have since significantly changed our article as Intel clarified many of our questions and demystified CIF, what its scope of data-collection is, and how it makes its way to your machine with Intel's driver software.

It's been one year since President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law, launching the most significant industrial policy initiative in a generation. In addition to the much-discussed manufacturing boom the law incentivized, we also stand on the cusp of America's next big innovation boom. Powered by the promises of the CHIPS Act, Intel is doubling down on research and development (R&D) that will fuel new, leading-edge chip manufacturing facilities to power today's advanced technologies and tomorrow's transformative innovations. Intel is also investing in much-needed workforce development programs to ensure American workers have the necessary skills and talent to out-innovate the competition and meet the long-term demand for leading-edge semiconductors. Every day, we see firsthand how Intel's investments are putting America back on the path to manufacturing and technology leadership, while broadening access to opportunities and supporting the next generation of innovators.

Multiple leakers on Twitter/X have posted screenshots or pictures of Intel's upcoming Core i5-14600K CPU and it appears that some earlier rumours about this specific SKU weren't entirely accurate. It was believed that the Core i5-14600K was to get a core bump over the Core i5-13600K, but apparently this isn't the case, if the new leaks hold true. However, it also appears that the CPU will boost higher than expected, as earlier rumours suggested 5.3 GHz max boost clock and now it appears it'll go all the way up to 5.5 GHz, which is still lower than its Core i7 and Core i9 peers. The i5 also lacks Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0, so it won't be possible to squeeze some extra performance out of this chip without overclocking it the good old fashioned way.

@9550pro posted a screenshot of CPU-Z in Chinese showing the Core i5-14600K running in a Gigabyte Z790 Gaming X AX motherboard, but it's unknown what the rest of the system configuration was. However, it does show the CPU having a clock multiplier ranging from 8 to 55, confirming the 5.5 GHz max CPU clock speed. @wxnod posted a picture of an MSI Z690 Edge TI WiFi DDR4 motherboard with a Core i7-14700K paired with 16 GB of DDR4 memory running at 4600 MHz on Gear 1, which in itself is a feat, although it's unknown if this was stable. The CPU was shown as running at 6.3 GHz, which is most likely a manual overclock of the CPU, as the Core i7-14700K isn't expected to be a 6 GHz plus part. We're getting close to the launch of Intel's 14th gen Core processors, so we won't have to wait too long to find out the full specs of these CPUs.

Update 07:17 UTC: Twitter/X bot Benchleaks has found some Geekbench results for the Core i5-14600K which @harukaze5719 made a nice graph of that we've added below. This suggests that Intel has managed to eke out quite a bit of extra performance from these "refreshed" CPUs.

Every week, Zheng Jiong (ZJ), Intel China's senior director of Client Customer Engineering in the Client Computing Group (CCG), and his team of engineers make the hourlong drive across Shanghai to meet with their counterparts at Lenovo. They make a beeline to the new Advanced System Innovation Lab deep inside Lenovo's offices. It's here that engineers from both companies pool their collective brainpower to solve some of the world's toughest hardware and software challenges - the ones that pave the path to lighter, sleeker and ever-more-powerful laptops that many consumers and businesses depend on every day. This new 750-square-foot lab, which opened in July, is filled with cutting-edge tech tools and laptop prototypes in various stages of development. It's one of many joint engineering labs across the world populated by Intel and Lenovo engineers.

Joint labs like these allow engineers to focus on solving tough issues-- ones that need to be addressed to prevent product delays or empty holiday gift boxes.
Said ZJ: "We share a long and illustrious history of deep engineering collaboration with Lenovo." He added that Intel has dedicated engineers tasked with specific roles in enabling and developing new designs together with their lead collaborator. "We work together very well and are thankful for the innovation support Lenovo has given us through joint labs like these."

Juniper Systems, Inc. is excited to announce that the all-new Mesa Pro Rugged Tablet is now available featuring an IP68 rating for ingress protection. The Mesa Pro is the first IP68-rated rugged tablet that uses an active cooling fan to cool the system's processor.

'This is a big moment for Juniper Systems', said Darren Hellstern, Mesa Pro product manager at Juniper Systems. 'We have a long history of offering IP68 on our rugged products. A lot of time and hard work has gone into securing the rating for Mesa Pro. Achieving this rating of ingress protection against water and dust in a tablet with a fan is an engineering challenge. Our team was up for that challenge and delivered for our customers'.

Ex AMD Director of Technical Marketing Robert Hallock has joined Intel as Senior Director of Technical Marketing after a sabbatical. During his sabbatical, Hallock ran his own company that focused on aftermarket car mods. Hallock had a 12 year tenure at AMD and was the face of many of AMD's more technical videos and also took part in some keynote product instructions when it came to the more technical details of product introductions.

According to a post by Hallock on LinkedIn, his new position will apparently focus on AI for consumer processors, something that ties in with what Intel is about to announce at Intel Innovation 2023. As such, we might be seeing Hallock doing some of the presentations at Intel Innovation 2023 in September. Hallocks post on LinkedIn talks about AI accelerators, again suggesting that he will be mainly involved with the ex Movidius team, but as he mentions client computing, his responsibility might still extend outside of just the AI side of things. Time will tell if he gets a similar role at Intel as he had at AMD, or if he'll just be one of many directors at the company.

Intel Innovation is Intel's yearly tech conference and the company has revealed some of what it'll share at the event that kicks off on the 19th of September. One of the sessions at the event is called Intel Client Hardware Roadmap and the Rise of AI and during that event, Intel will be sharing its latest "client hardware platforms" which according to the session blurb will include the upcoming Intel Core Ultra processors which currently goes under the codename of Meteor Lake.

It's unclear how much detail Intell will go into and based on the subject of the session, this should most likely be focused on the desktop platform, but could also cover the mobile parts. According to VideoCardz we should expect Intel to detail the integrated VPU which is said to be based on hardware from Movidius, a company Intel acquired a few years ago and that focused on making machine learning hardware. The VPU should be a low-power accelerator that handles AI inference tasks that will be part of at least some future Intel processors, but for now, we don't really know what Intel's plans are for these types of features in its CPUs, apart from offering something competitive with AMD's Xilinx derived AI Engine.

V-COLOR Technology Inc, a leading memory manufacturer, is proud to present a new speed reached for DDR5 96 GB (2x 48 GB) kit of 7800 CL38.
Aiming to break barriers and elevate performance, with this new high-speed of overclocked 96 GB (2x 48 GB) capacity kit at DDR5-7800 CL38-48-48-126

Testing the limits of DDR5 memory speed, v-color reached DDR5-7800 CL38-48-48-126 at 96 GB (2x48GB) kit configuration, with the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 APEX and Intel Core i9-13900KF processor. Seamlessly compatible with Intel XMP 3.0, the Manta XPrism RGB DDR5 96 GB (2x 48 GB) ensures a hassle-free and optimized experience. Effortlessly enhance system's performance and achieve the perfect balance between speed and stability.

Experience a computing revolution with the Minisforum UN1265, featuring the Intel Core i7-12650H, a high-performance processor from Intel's 12th generation lineup. With an impressive 10 cores (6P cores + 4E cores) and 16 threads, this processor effortlessly handles demanding workloads, ensuring seamless multitasking experiences for both professionals and enthusiasts alike.

Efficient Cooling for Maximum Performance: The Minisforum UN1265 features a single heat pipe cooling system that rapidly dissipates heat, keeping your PC cool and ready for any challenge. Unceasing Creativity: The Minisforum UN1265, equipped with AV1 decoding and Intel Quick Sync Video technology, enables lightning-fast video conversion. Process multiple videos simultaneously with ease, ensuring smooth synchronization and unleashing your creativity like never before.

Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the general availability of new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances powered by custom 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. This launch is the latest on a growing list of 4th Gen Xeon-powered instances that deliver leading total cost of ownership (TCO) and the most built-in accelerators of any CPU to fuel key workloads like AI, database, networking and enterprise applications.

"Intel worked closely with AWS to bring our feature-rich 4th Gen Xeon processors to its cloud customers, many of which have benefited from its performance and value for months in private and public preview. Today, we're happy to bring that same real-world value to cloud customers around the globe," said Lisa Spelman, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the Xeon Products and Solutions Group.

Intel Graphics late Wednesday released the Arc GPU Graphics Software 101.4578 beta. These drivers come with Game On (day-zero) optimization for the hottest game release of this Summer, "Baldur's Gate 3." Intel beat both AMD and NVIDIA to be the first with optimized drivers for the game. The fantasy RPG releases later today. Given that the game is very easy on system requirements, you can expect the entire span of Intel Arc "Alchemist" graphics card to be perfectly suited to the game. The Arc A380 should be able to max out the game at resolutions of 1080p, while the A750 and A770 should max it out at 1440p and 4K Ultra HD.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.4578 beta

ASRock launches the company's first all-white motherboard available on both Intel & AMD platforms, and the exciting thing is, this design is not limited to just high-end product, the first three motherboards to have this brand new outfit will be B760M-HDV/M.2 & H610M-HDV/M.2+ D5 from Intel, as for the AMD side we have B550M Pro SE. Looking good is no longer a privilege to expensive motherboards, for the first time stylish budget-friendly product has become a new trend of DIY.

Besides the brand new outfit, the functionality has been upgraded too, new Dragon 2.5G Lan and DDR5 memory support on selected models gives the new motherboard a boost of performance, all three motherboards are compatible with NVMe M.2 storage devises and most importantly, RGB LED header is available for stunning yet creative PC builds.

AMD Radeon RX 6000 and RX 700 series based on RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 GPU architectures have been benchmarked by folks over at ComputerBase. However, these weren't regular benchmarks of performance but rather power consumption. According to their latest results, they discovered that enabling Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) can lower the power consumption of AMD Radeon cards in idle. Using a 4K display with a 144 Hz refresh rate, ComputerBase benchmarked Radeon RX 6800/6700 XT and RX 7900 XT, both last-generation and current-generation graphics cards. The performance matrix also includes a comparison to Intel Arc A770, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3080, and RTX 4080.

Regarding performance figures, the tests compare desktop idle consumption, dual monitor power consumption, window movement, YouTube with SDR at 60 FPS, and YouTube with HDR at 60 FPS, all done on a 4K 144 Hz monitor setup. You can see the comparison below, with the most significant regression in power consumption being Radeon RX 7900 XTX using 81% less power in single and 71% less power in dual monitor setup.

The escalating challenges in acquiring high-performance x86 servers have prompted Chinese data center companies to accelerate the shift to Arm-based system-on-chips (SoCs). Investment banking firm Bernstein reports that approximately 40% of all Arm-powered servers globally are currently being used in China. While most servers operate on x86 processors from AMD and Intel, there's a growing preference for Arm-based SoCs, especially in the Chinese market. Several global tech giants, including AWS, Ampere, Google, Fujitsu, Microsoft, and Nvidia, have already adopted or developed Arm-powered SoCs. However, Arm-based SoCs are increasingly favorable for Chinese firms, given the difficulty in consistently sourcing Intel's Xeon or AMD's EPYC. Chinese companies like Alibaba, Huawei, and Phytium are pioneering the development of these Arm-based SoCs for client and data center processors.

However, the US government's restrictions present some challenges. Both Huawei and Phytium, blacklisted by the US, cannot access TSMC's cutting-edge process technologies, limiting their ability to produce competitive processors. Although Alibaba's T-Head can leverage TSMC's latest innovations, it can't license Arm's high-performance computing Neoverse V-series CPU cores due to various export control rules. Despite these challenges, many chip designers are considering alternatives such as RISC-V, an unrestricted, rapidly evolving open-source instruction set architecture (ISA) suitable for designing highly customized general-purpose cores for specific workloads. Still, with the backing of influential firms like AWS, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Samsung, the Armv8 and Armv9 instruction set architectures continue to hold an edge over RISC-V. These companies' support ensures that the software ecosystem remains compatible with their CPUs, which will likely continue to drive the adoption of Arm in the data center space.

Without fanfare, Intel has launched two new mobile GPUs in the shape of the Arc A570M and the A530M. The Arc A570M gets 16 Xe Cores and 256 execution units, as well as four render slices and 16 RT units. The lower-end Arc A530M gets to make do with 12 Xe cores, 192 execution units, three render slices and 12 RT units, which is a smaller cut than the model name suggests. What's interesting to note here is that the Arc A570M appears to have identical hardware specs to the Arc A550M that launched in the second quarter of 2022, although as we'll see, the clock speeds and TGP differ between the parts. The Arc A570M supports 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, the same as the Arc A550M, with the Arc A530M supports 4 or 8 GB of GDDR6.

Both the Arc A570M and the A530M will get a GPU clock speed of 1,300 MHz, which is a significant boost from the Arc A550M which is plodding along at a mere 900 MHz in comparison. This makes the two newcomers Intel's third highest clocked mobile GPUs, with only the Arc A770M and Arc A370M being clocked higher. The downside of this is an increase in TGP, where the Arc A550M had a fairly reasonable TGP of 60 Watts, the Arc A530M has a TGP range of 65 to 95 Watts, while the Arc A570M extends this to 75-95 Watts. The rest of the specs appear to carry over from the Arc A550M, so the new GPUs will support up to four displays via eDP, DP 2.0 or HDMI 2.1 and the full set of video encoders and decoders are also supported. The new additions are still made using TSMC's N6 node, so what we're looking at are most likely just optimised silicon here, which has led Intel to be able to boost the clock speeds while maintaining acceptable thermals.