Intel Teases Upcoming QLC SSD For Datacenters

@Intel has started production of their first datacenter #PCIe #SSD using #QLC #3DNAND #flashmemory, which stores four bits per memory cell. This isn't a full product announcement and we don't even have a proper name for the new SSD, just a mention that it is part of a new D5 product family for datacenters—which may signal a reorganization of Intel's naming scheme for SSDs. Intel will be sharing more information in a few weeks at Flash Memory Summit August 7-9, where Intel VP Rob Crooke is scheduled to give a keynote speech on August 8. Earlier this year, Intel confirmed that they would be producing QLC SSDs in the second half of 2018, and that they were putting up to 20TB in a 2.5" U.2 drive, but it is not yet clear whether that configuration is one that's going into mass production at this time. Intel is expecting this to be the first QLC SSD available for this market segment. Micron has already launched an enterprise SATA SSD using QLC NAND. No consumer SSDs with QLC NAND have been announced yet. Samsung, Toshiba and Western Digital have been talking about their QLC NAND for at least a year, but of them only Toshiba has confirmed plans to mass produce QLC on the current 64L 3D NAND process. Samsung has put off QLC until their 96L generation, which has just entered mass production but only of small TLC dies so far, so they are unlikely to be in mass production of QLC SSDs until late this year or early next year.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13100/intel-teases-upcoming-qlc-ssd-for-datacenters

Intel and Micron To Dissolve 3D XPoint Partnership After 2019

A press release from Intel today has clarified the state of the #3DXPoint Joint Venture the company has with @Micron. Currently @Intel and Micron co-developed the new class of non-volatile memory, with manufacturing at the Intel-Micron Flash Technologies (IMFT) fab in Utah. Intel’s statement today states that for the second generation of memory, the development will also be a joint effort and is expected to complete in the first half of 2019. However the third generation will be developed independently, allowing each company to focus on the separate business needs. 3D XPoint technology, branded as Optane by Intel and QuantX by Micron, has been a mini-revolution when it comes to non-volatile memory. Intel’s Optane products, mostly storage but with recent announcements about DRAM, have seen a sizeable uptick in interest from specific enterprise markets that can benefit from persistant data or fast random access storage. Intel is expected to launch its DRAM products alongside its next generation server architecture at some point in the new future. Under the terms of the joint venture, each company gets 50% of the flash memory made at the IMFT fab in Utah. Micron’s QuantX has not been released, which raises the question as to who has been buying it. Intel has long held that 3D XPoint has a long life ahead of it, offering speed, density, and a wide range of applications. The industry is still waiting to be fully exposed to Intel’s initial promises about the product, from storage to memory, but also future generations of the product, such as adding layers and capacity. As with all technologies, these things are generational, and today’s announcement states that Intel and Micron are still working jointly with the second generation product. The completion of second generation 3D XPoint is expected in the first half of 2019, but then R&D focus will shift to completing and finalizing the third generation. It is this generation that is the focus of the announcement: the companies will no longer work together for it. This means that both companies will have a chance to adjust their roadmaps independently, either pursing a more aggressive strategy, or none at all. The note also states that the memory will continue to be built in the same fab, which raises questions as to how the joint venture will work in that case, if the research is done independently. Both Intel and Micron have been having problems of late, with Intel’s Optane DRAM being released later than originally promised, and Micron having issues with the Chinese government, as well as disappointing sales of its own 3D XPoint. At least some clarity is being given to the 3D XPoint side of the businesses, if only to shine a light on the nature of the agreement for the next few years.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13083/intel-and-micron-update-3d-xpoint-roadmap-combined-effort-2nd-gen-3rd-gen-separate

Intel Officially Loses Its Manufacturing Lead

By contrast, @DigiTimes reports that chip giant @Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), which had long enjoyed a comfortable lead in chip manufacturing technology over other chip manufacturers, won't go into production on its 10-nanometer technology (which is roughly comparable to TSMC's 7-nanometer technology) until the second half of 2018, "when TSMC's more advanced 7nm process will be fully in volume production." At this point, I think it's safe to say that Intel has lost its manufacturing leadership position to TSMC. Let's go over two key implications of this. 1. Increased competitive pressure for Intel Intel's advantage in manufacturing technology naturally translated into better products. Faster, more efficient manufacturing technology meant faster chips, and denser manufacturing technology meant the company could cram more features into a given space than the competition could, potentially affording it superior margins or giving it the ability to price more aggressively while maintaining high gross profit margins. Since most of Intel's competitors rely on third-party chip manufacturing companies like TSMC to build their products, TSMC's strengthened technology position should translate into better products from TSMC's customers -- the products that'll go head to head with Intel's products in the marketplace. Product competitiveness isn't determined solely by manufacturing technology, but now that TSMC has caught up with Intel (and actually seems to be a little ahead), Intel has fewer tools in its arsenal to try to build the world's best products. 2. Contract chip manufacturing dreams shattered Intel has been talking about trying to enter the contract chip manufacturing market in a bid to compete directly with the likes of TSMC for quite some time, though the business itself has yet to generate material revenue. The company's pitch has typically been along the lines of: "We have superior technology than the competition, which attracts potential customers." Superior technology alone isn't enough to secure contract chip manufacturing orders -- the ease of use of that technology, the depth and breadth of a manufacturer's intellectual property portfolio, and the manufacturer's track record are all critical to success, here. However, with superior technology, Intel at least had some hope that it could begin to build a solid foundation. Now that Intel doesn't appear to have a technology advantage, I don't see any reason a potential customer would risk their business on an unproven company that managed to turn a multiyear technology lead into parity at best, and at worst, a slight laggard position. Considering these dynamics, coupled with the fact that Intel hasn't announced any new customers for its contract manufacturing division in quite a while, I think its efforts to try to become a contract manufacturer will fail spectacularly. If Intel needs to start cutting costs, expect this division to be among the first casualties.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.yahoo.com/amphtml/finance/news/intel-officially-loses-manufacturing-lead-153100688.html#ampshare=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intel-officially-loses-manufacturing-lead-153100688.html

Intel and Portworx Deliver Breakthrough Performance to Answer Enterprises' Demand for Stateful Containerized Applications in Production

LOS ALTOS, Calif., April 19, 2018 /@PRNewswire/ --  @Portworx, the best cloud native storage solution for containers, today announced a reference architecture with @Intel® that illustrates how #datacenter and #cloud architects can build enterprise scale #container and #microservices infrastructure using Portworx and Intel technology to achieve unprecedented data performance, high availability and resiliency. As Enterprises adopt containers & microservices as part of their DevOps-led business transformation, they come to a point where deployments stall without a solution for persistent storage since they are unable to containerize their most important, mission critical applications like databases, big data applications, other stateful services. The rapid growth of Portworx, who now counts 14 customers in the Fortune Global 1000 and U.S federal agencies, is fueled by this pent-up demand for containerized stateful services. Now, by leveraging the high-performance Intel Xeon® processor E5-2600 family, large capacity Intel Solid State Drives (Intel SSD), and high-speed Intel Ethernet Converged Network Adapters, and Portworx, customers can easily operate highly reliable, elastic data services infrastructure. Portworx PX-Enterprise is a cloud native storage solution purpose-built for enterprise DevOps. PX-Enterprise automates the deployment and operations of data services at scale. With PX-Enterprise, an operator can manage any database or stateful service on any infrastructure using any container scheduler including Kubernetes and Mesosphere DC/OS. PX-Enterprise offers a single data management layer for all stateful services, no matter where they run. "PX-Enterprise eliminates all the data layer pain points with stateful containerized applications enabling managed service providers and enterprises to deploy and scale cloud-native applications rapidly," said Murli Thirumale, CEO, Portworx. "Intel's high-performance architecture combined with Portworx cloud native storage enables applications to run at close to bare-metal performance levels.  MSP and Enterprise cloud-native container deployments are expanding even faster with Portworx than I would have predicted a year ago." Using this breakthrough reference architecture can help reduce an enterprise data center's total cost of ownership, while increasing flexibility and scalability with elastic cloud-scale provisioning and data services infrastructure for containerized workloads. This unique Portworx and Intel reference architecture was performance evaluated on representative cloud and on-premises configurations. The test specifications and results can be found on our associated technical blog post. The following benchmarks were completed: Storage benchmarks to demonstrate the raw system performance of PX-Enterprise devices. Application performance suites to demonstrate performance of real-world applications running on a PX-Enterprise storage platform.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/intel-and-portworx-deliver-breakthrough-performance-to-answer-enterprises-demand-for-stateful-containerized-applications-in-production-300632689.html

Stocks This Week: Buy Intel, Microsoft And Amazon

For this coming week, the wind is in the sails of bullish stocks. The long recommendation from last Sunday, @Apple, rose by 3.8% in the last week. The three stocks are all buys and all are in the Nasdaq. Despite the market turbulence, the relative strength rankings have not changed much. The Nasdaq Composite, the Nasdaq 100 and the Barra Growth Index remain strong. In a bear market, the strongest relative stocks become the worst performers. If a bear market were beginning, these indices and stocks would be starting to lag. This has not begun. Intel is attractive. The cycle bottoms on the 18th and runs up for the coming week. In the last year, 75% of the buy signals have been successful. Relative strength is strong and is expected to sustain. Daily momentum is turning up. @intel @Microsoft @Amazon

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/04/15/stocks-this-week-buy-intel-microsoft-and-amazon/#554e9a5b439c

3 Reasons to Be Excited About Intel Corp.'s Memory Efforts

Chip giant @Intel (NASDAQ: #INTC ) has been aggressively investing in its non-volatile memory business -- non-volatile memory is a type of computer memory that's commonly used for permanent storage -- for years now.  Those investments have included significant increases in both research and development for future memory technologies as well as in capital equipment to support increased memory production.  IMAGE SOURCE: INTEL. In 2017, Intel's memory business saw revenue grow a solid 36.6% to $3.5 billion, thanks to growth in shipments of NAND-flash-based solid-state drives as well as shipments of solid-state drives based on its proprietary, higher-performance 3D XPoint technology.  Though the business unit lost money in 2017 -- around $300 million, to be exact -- the company said in its most recent annual filing that it expects this business to swing to profitability in 2018.  With that in mind, here are three reasons to be excited about Intel's non-volatile memory business.  1. A growing solid state drive market The market for NAND-flash-based solid-state drives is large and set to grow as faster NAND-flash-based drives supplant slower hard-disk drives in personal computer and data center storage applications. For some context, market research company IDC says it expects industrywide solid-state drive revenue to grow at a 14.8% compounded annual growth rate to $33.6 billion by 2021. Intel's non-volatile memory business generated $3.5 billion in 2017, so if Intel's non-volatile memory business grows roughly in line with the market through 2021, this business could generate $6 billion in revenue within just a few years.  Moreover, Intel's competitive positioning in NAND flash seems to be improving, so I wouldn't be surprised if the company were able to grow its market share in the years ahead, further accelerating revenue growth.  2. More than just NAND Although the traditional NAND-flash-based solid-state drive market is a large and growing opportunity for Intel, the company has another memory technology that its competitors, aside from its development partner Micron (NASDAQ:MU), don't have access to: 3D XPoint. 3D XPoint is a type of non-volatile memory that's substantially faster than NAND flash, though it's more expensive to produce. This memory technology allows Intel to build solid-state drives that are much faster than even the best NAND-flash-based drives, so for performance-sensitive data center customers as well as consumers willing to pay more to get the best, Intel has a virtual lock on the market (Micron has yet to commercialize solid-state drives based on 3D XPoint).  Over time, Intel is likely to face more aggressive competition here as competitors rush to develop their own alternatives to 3D XPoint, but Intel currently enjoys a significant first-mover advantage.  3. Profit contributor For years, Intel's non-volatile memory business has lost money. Even though the company enjoyed strong growth in this business last year, profitability remained elusive because of Intel's increased investments in that segment. Put simply, Intel's memory business has been operating below scale.  Beginning in 2018, Intel's non-volatile memory business is expected to start generating profits -- it's finally going to achieve scale. Though Intel will likely need to continually increase its investments to keep up the development of new technologies, those operating expenses aren't anticipated to grow as quickly as Intel's revenue will.  To that end, I expect Intel's non-volatile memory business to generate increasingly large profits in the years ahead.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/04/11/3-reasons-to-be-excited-about-intel-corps-memory-e.aspx

Intel Gets FPGA Win As Dell EMC, Fujitsu Adopt Reprogrammable Chips For Their Server Lineups

Intel scored a win for its Programmable Solutions Group Wednesday, saying @Dell EMC and @Fujitsu are adopting the company's reprogrammable chips in their server lineups. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said this marks the first major use of the field-programmable gate array ( #FPGA ) chip "to help speed up mainstream applications for the modern #datacenter." This also helps validate Intel's $16.7 billion acquisition of @Altera, which was completed in 2015 to harness the company's reprogrammable chips for high-end computing. Dell EMC's PowerEdge R640, R740 and R740XD servers that incorporate Intel's FPGA acceleration are available now. Fujitsu, another major data center player, is also adopting Intel's FPGA chips. “We are at the horizon of a new era of data center computing as Dell EMC and Fujitsu put the power and flexibility of Intel FPGAs in mainstream server products,” Reynette Au, vice president of marketing for the Intel Programmable Solutions Group, said in a statement. “We’re enabling our customers and partners to create a rich set of high-performance solutions at scale by delivering the benefits of hardware performance, all in a software development environment.” Intel said its FPGA chips, which are programmable after manufacture, provide the right balance for boosting both performance and power efficiency at levels that modern data centers require. The versatility and speed of Intel's reprogrammable chips allow them to handle a wide range of workloads, including analytics and financial services, the company added. Other applications include smart city infrastructure and smart grid. Dell EMC and Fujitsu are implementing a full Intel hardware and software stack in their server products that includes Intel Programmable Acceleration Cards with the Arria 10 GX FPGA chip and the Intel Acceleration Stack for Intel Xeon Scalable processor with FPGAs. [Sponsored Suggested Post: 2018 Marks the Milestone of D&H Distributing's Centennial Anniversary Year! D&H Distributing has been serving customers and vendors for over a century. Explore 100 years of innovation and excellence!] The company's FPGA products fall within Intel's Programmable Solutions Group, which grew annual revenue by 14 percent to $1.9 billion in 2017. In a recent interview, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said Altera and Mobileye, the company's 2017 acquisition, "are our growth drivers for the future." Michael Goldstein, president and CEO of LAN Infotech, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based cloud services provider, told CRN that Wednesday's announcement signals to companies like his to take note. "If the big players are looking at it, this is something that will draw our attention," he said. However, Goldstein said he is taking a wait-and-see approach to understand how FPGA chips could potentially impact his customer base, which includes health-care companies, law firms and real estate firms. "It's kind of groundbreaking -- we don’t think we have seen anything like this in a long time because most things are locked down and embedded," he said. "That brings you back to a little more of an open standard."

https://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/300101966/intel-gets-fpga-win-as-dell-emc-fujitsu-adopt-reprogrammable-chips-for-their-server-lineups.htm

Advanced Scale Forum Announces Sponsorship from Dell EMC, HPE, Microsoft and Others

SAN DIEGO, Calif., April 10, 2018 — Advanced Scale Forum 2018, a power summit designed to solve challenges in the build-out of scalable advanced enterprise computing solutions, today announced this year’s sponsor lineup. The summit, produced by Tabor Communications (publisher of HPCwire, EnterpriseTech, Datanami) and nGage Events, is scheduled for May 6-8, 2018 at the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort & Spa in Austin, Texas, and will focus on #AI, #deeplearning and #machinelearning, #Blockchain, advanced-scale #cloudcomputing, #IoTedge to #IoTcore and high performance computing #HPC. Advanced Scale Forum (#ASF) is proud to announce the following sponsorships with key technology providers, who will be conducting private, board room briefings to leading enterprise executives: @Accenture, @Dell EMC, @HPE, @Microsoft, @NVIDIA, @Quantum, @Attunity, @CB Technologies, @HDF, @WekaIO, @AMD, @Arcadia Data, @Cray, @E8 Storage, @Intel, @Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, @MapR, @NetApp, @Nimbix, @Penguin Computing, @Six Nines, @Striim, @System Fabric Works, @Talking Data, @Data Vortex, @Memsql and @PSSC Labs. Through these sponsorships, ASF brings attendees face-to-face with advanced-scale IT’s leading solution providers as they share the case studies that have driven the most value for their customers. This diversity of vendor perspectives allows for full view of industry direction, including: strategy, consulting, digital technology and operations, scale-out tiered storage, cloud and hybrid environments, deep learning and modern AI, and more. “Convergence around the high end of computing, data analytics and AI is transforming the business computing landscape, where modern IT solutions are engines for innovation and growth,” said Tiffany Trader, Managing Editor of HPCwire and Director of Editorial, Tabor Communications. “Advanced Scale Forum brings you face-to-face with these emerging technologies as vehicles for driving real-world results. Through leadership keynotes, case studies, one-on-one meetings, and breakout sessions, this three-day summit provides a tailored experience like no other. The information gained over the course of the summit is essential for staying ahead in our industry.” Helping to drive the sponsor lineup has been the announcement of this 2018’s Summit Agenda, which features thought leaders and industry experts on hot-button topics from Blockchain, data governance, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the first ever demonstration of a Gulfstream aircraft simulation outside of NDA-restricted sales meetings. “Advanced Scale Forum is a one-of-a-kind executive summit,” said Tom Tabor, CEO of Tabor Communications. “Nowhere in the world is there an event that’s exclusive to leaders from the industrial end-user and vendor communities where mission-critical, production-level challenges are discussed with a focus of utilizing advanced-scale computing technologies as a cornerstone of the solution. “Each year we are honored to bring more vendors, thought leaders and decision makers to the table, and the activity surrounding our 2018 event has been unprecedented. We’re immensely proud of this year’s program as well as the breadth of in-depth sponsor participation, and cannot wait to share it with our attendees.”

https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/advanced-scale-forum-announces-sponsorship-from-hpe-microsoft-and-others/

Amazon Web Services brings machine learning to edge IoT

Public cloud provider @Amazon Web Services ( #AWS) has updated its edge computing platform, #Greengrass, to incorporate #machinelearning. The new offering brings together Internet of Things ( #IoT) capabilities, machine learning ( #ML), and edge computing to help organisations use AWS to build, train, and test ML models. These can then be deployed to small, low-powered, intermittently-connected IoT devices, including those running in factories, vehicles, fields, and homes. The latest version will be able to run #Apache #MXNet and TensorFlow Lite models locally on edge IoT devices using @NVIDIA #Jetson TX2 and @Intel #Atom architectures, according to @JeffBarr, AWS evangelist, in a blog post. The optimised libraries can take advantage of GPU and FPGA hardware accelerators at the edge in order to provide fast, local machine learning inferences. According to Barr, customers can also use Amazon SageMaker and other cloud-based ML tools to build, train, and test their models before deploying them to IoT devices. Users can also deploy 32-bit Raspberry Pi devices for local testing, he added. Use cases Barr said that Amazon has tossed the IoT, machine learning, and edge computing “into a blender” with the new offering. Among the potential use cases for Greengrass ML are precision farming, he said. Using the system, intelligent devices in the field could process images of soil, plants, pests, and crops, take local corrective action based on changing conditions, and send status reports to the cloud. The service could also be used for physical security, he added. Smart devices, such as Amazon’s deep-learning-enabled camera, DeepLens, could process images and scenes locally, looking for objects, watching for changes, and even detecting faces. “When something of interest or concern arises, the device can pass the image or the video to the cloud and use Amazon Rekognition to take a closer look,” explained Barr. The technology could also be used in industrial maintenance. Sensors would be able to run inference operations on power consumption, noise levels, and even vibration to flag anomalies, predict failures, and detect faulty equipment, he said. Internet of Business says With Dell, Microsoft, and a range of other vendors now focusing their IoT efforts on the critical edge environment and the distributed core, the race is on the make edge deployments faster, smarter, more intuitive – and cheaper – so that IoT projects can realise their full potential. In the long run, as the IoT rises, many organisations will find that their cloud investments will become more diffused. For many processing tasks, computing will need to be brought much closer to the point of delivery

https://internetofbusiness.com/aws-brings-machine-learning-inference-to-edge-iot/

NVRAM pace quickens with Nantero investment

@Nantero is currently working with more than a dozen partners and customers to productize their CNT #NVRAM. The technology has numerous potential applications and the first products are expected next year. INVESTORS Nantero has raised over $120 million over the years, including this latest round of over $29 million they announced today. The strategic investors include @Dell Technologies Capital, @Cisco Investments, @Kingston Technology, and three undisclosed "leading global companies in the semiconductor industry" presumably not including Intel. Former @Intel partner @Micron, perhaps? The importance of the strategic investors, besides their money, is that these are savvy tech companies with respectable due diligence. While Nantero hasn't yet proved their processes can scale, they have mustered sufficient evidence to justify further investment.

Nantero isn't proposing to build a multi-billion dollar fab for their CNT NVRAM. Like ARM Holdings, they want to license their technology to companies that already have multi-billion dollar fabs. In the conversations I've had with them, they say that their technology can be built on existing lines, even fully depreciated ones, which is one key to their cost-effectiveness.

NEW PRODUCTS IN DEVELOPMENT

Investment is well and good, but it's products that get my attention. And Nantero has some nice ones in the pipeline, including:

A multi-Gb DDR4-compatible nonvolatile standalone memory product with speed comparable to DRAM and a lower price/GB than DRAM.

A standalone chip designed as a cache for SSDs or HDDs which removes the need for battery backup and allows dramatic expansion of cache size, substantially speeding up the drive.

A highly scalable embedded nonvolatile memory that can scale to 5nm in size and operate at DRAM-like speeds, and operate under very high temperature, making it suitable for many industrial applications.

THE STORAGE BITS TAKE

NVRAM is a game changer for the entire industry. Since the, in retrospect, premature Intel/Micron 3D XPoint announcement almost three years ago, the industry's big players have been working behind the scenes to get our systems and software ready for NVRAM.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/nvram-pace-quickens-with-nantero-investment/

3 Things You Need to Know About Intel Corp.'s Cascade Lake

Last summer, chip giant @Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) released a new family of processors for the #datacenter, called Xeon Scalable. At the time, Intel touted the Xeon Scalable chips as "the industry's biggest platform advancement in a decade." The Xeon Scalable products offered significantly better performance than their predecessors as well as a more robust feature set, to boot.

Of course, Intel has made it clear that it aims to refresh its key processor products at a roughly annual cadence. To that end, Intel is expected to launch its next-generation of Xeon Scalable processors, code-named Cascade Lake, sometime in the second half of 2018.

Here are three things you need to know about the Cascade Lake chips

1. Manufacturing technology improvements

Intel's current Xeon Scalable chips, which are based on the company's Skylake-SP architecture, are manufactured using the company's second-generation 14-nanometer technology, known as 14+. The Cascade Lake chips are expected to be manufactured in Intel's third-generation 14-nanometer technology, unsurprisingly called 14++.

According to Intel, 14++ offers a roughly 10% speed boost over 14+ at the same power consumption, so Intel is likely to parlay those manufacturing improvements to deliver performance enhancements (likely through increases in the operating frequency of the chips compared to their Skylake-SP predecessors).

2. Optane memory module support

The upcoming Cascade Lake chips are expected to support memory modules based on Intel's 3D XPoint memory technology, a type of memory that's supposed to be more cost-effective than traditional DRAM and can retain its data even when power to the system is removed (such memory is referred to as "persistent memory"). Intel markets 3D XPoint-based products under its Optane brand.

According to a leaked Intel slide deck, the company intends to support Optane memory modules on "select SKUs" of Cascade Lake.

What this likely means, then, is that Intel will try to charge a premium for Cascade Lake-based chips that support 3D XPoint-based memory modules in a bid to further increase its data center processor average selling prices and ultimately accelerate revenue growth in the company's data center group (DCG). 

https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/04/04/3-things-you-need-to-know-about-intel-corps-cascad.aspx

ARM Reaches Into the Data Center, Competes With Intel

When talking about #softwaredefined networking ( #SDN) and network functions virtualization ( #NFV), we often talk about software that can run on x86 servers. The term x86 refers to instruction set architectures for silicon chips. Most x86 servers that run SDN and NFV software use chips from either @Intel or @AMD. But that could change as @ARM is making a concerted effort to take market share in this segment. ARM doesn’t make chips. It creates the intellectual property (IP) building blocks for a chip. And while x86 refers to an instruction set architecture, ARM also has a set of defined instructions. But instead of manufacturing chips, ARM gives the instruction set architecture to its customers — such as @Qualcomm, @Broadcom, @NXP, and @Cavium — and those companies manufacture the chips.

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/arm-reaches-data-center-competes-intel/2018/04/

Supermicro First-to-Market with IoT Embedded Solutions optimized for New 8th Gen Intel® Core™ Processors

Leveraging its deep expertise in server technology, @Supermicro is bringing customers some of the first embedded #IoT solutions optimized for the new 8th Gen @Intel® Core™ processors. The company's X11SCV, X11SCQ and X11SCZ series motherboards offer better performance and more cores at the same price level as previous generation platforms. Supermicro designs these new long-life platforms with high-grade components to provide high reliability and availability. "These compact new Supermicro Embedded Building Block solutions bring advanced technologies and performance into a dense, low-power architecture, extending intelligence to industrial automation and the network edge," said Charles Liang, President and CEO of Supermicro. "With the vast growth of data driven workloads across embedded applications worldwide, Supermicro remains dedicated to developing powerful, agile, and scalable IoT gateway and compact server, storage and networking solutions that deliver the best end to end ecosystems for ease of deployment and open scalability."

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/supermicro-first-to-market-with-iot-embedded-solutions-optimized-for-new-8th-gen-intel-core-processors-300623099.html

New Intel High-Performance CPU Brand Expected To Push PC Channel Sales

@Intel is launching a new brand for its eighth-generation Core processors to promote high-performance computers that one distributor says could help push PC channel sales. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company is calling the new brand an Intel Core platform extension that will promote the bundling of the i5, i7 and i9 processors with the performance-boosting #Optane memory module that Intel announced a little over a year ago. These processors that come with Optane memory bundled are receiving a modified naming convention: i5+, i7+ and i9+. Optane memory was previously only compatible with seventh-generation Kaby Lake CPUs. Intel's brand update was among a handful of eighth-generation Core CPU announcements the company made on Tuesday. Beyond announcing that Optane memory now works with Coffee Lake processors, the company also revealed the first eighth-generation Core i5, i7 and i9 processors for laptops and a new set of 300-series motherboards. In addition, the company announced Coffee Lake processors for Intel's vPro platform that provides PC remote management and other features for enterprises.

https://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/300101556/new-intel-high-performance-cpu-brand-expected-to-push-pc-channel-sales.htm

Dell enters emerging connected vehicles segment

@DellTechnologies has announced it has joined the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium ( #AECC) to advance the emerging connected- and self-driving vehicles segment. The focus is on managing automotive #bigdata in smarter ways. The car is a huge, potential ‘ #datacenter’ with the future state ability to collect and share information from a huge range of sources. This links to safety, performance metrics, improved #geolocation, and the basis of #selfdrivingvehicles. It is of these reasons, which link to considerable future sales, that technology companies are becoming involved. The value of connected car data, and the new business models that emerge from it, could be worth $1.5 trillion a year by 2030, according to McKinsey. Dell’s contribution to the AECC will help to evolve network architectures and computing infrastructures, designed to to make managing automotive big data more efficient. These developments are important to ensure connected cars drive intelligently. For this to happen, over the next 5-10 years, cars need to be equipped with fast Internet access, artificial intelligence and big data analytics. It is anticipated that by 2025, connected vehicles will generate $150 billion in annual revenue, grow to 100 million vehicles globally, and as a result transmit over 100 petabytes of data to the cloud per month. As part of this future model, vehicles will need to connect to both data centre clouds and various public clouds through edge compute and networks to facilitate the transfer of large amounts of data in real time. Dell Technologies will prepare architectures for next-gen mobile networks and the cloud, designed to work with automobiles. According to John Roese, President and CTO at Dell EMC: “We will see acceleration and AI in the car become more mainstream to meet the complexity of connected car workloads. But carefully designed and efficient compute and storage in the car will be critical to maximize power usage for driving distance, not IT overhead.” He adds that; “Data structures will be simplified with a semantically rich data management framework, and active archiving. In this new world code and data, software updates and high-resolution maps will require a new approach, one that will leverage cloud-native, microservices, dynamic policy allocation and formal methods for software assurance and security.” This is necessary since: “We will see autonomous vehicles becoming a new breed of mobile computing platform.” By joining the AECC scheme, Dell Technologies will work with companies like Intel, Ericsson, Toyota and others.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/business/dell-enters-emerging-connected-vehicles-segment/article/518812

Microsoft Corp. Reportedly Considers Windows License-Fee Change

According to @DigiTimes, software giant @Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is considering a shakeup to the way that it charges computer makers for licenses for its Windows operating system. Microsoft is reportedly going to charge computer makers more for #Windows licenses for computers with higher-end specifications -- such as more advanced displays and higher memory configurations -- than for computers with lower-end specifications.

Apparently, this wouldn't be an entirely new way of doing business for Microsoft: DigiTimes claims that beginning in 2017, Microsoft based its Windows licensing fees on the speed grades of the processors in the devices. The new licensing structure would simply be an extension of what the company was already doing.

Let's go over what this will mean for Microsoft and notebook makers.

A likely positive for Microsoft

Although the overall personal-computer market continues to see a decline in unit shipments, there has been an interesting dynamic at play underneath the proverbial covers of the market. Chip-giant Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), which supplies most of the processors that go into Windows-based computers, has seen a steady increase in the average selling prices of its notebook computer processors.

In 2017, for example, Intel reported that notebook processor average selling prices grew 2% year over year. Intel reported a similar year-over-year increase in notebook average selling prices during 2016, as well.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/04/01/microsoft-corp-reportedly-considers-windows-licens.aspx

VMware vSAN with Intel Optane Preview

We've tweeted about it and it's been featured in our newsletter, but to share the news with the rest of our audience, we have been working on prepping a four node #vSAN cluster. In partnership with @Supermicro, @VMware and @Intel, we have several reviews and content pieces forthcoming that highlight vSAN capabilities across a broad specturm of storage, interconnect, CPU and RAM configurations. Primarily we'll be working within what's dubbed Intel Select Solutions for VMware vSAN; but depending on timing and components, we may be able to expand into other areas including VMware tools like replication or VMware cloud options within @AWS for instance

http://www.storagereview.com/vmware_vsan_with_intel_optane_preview

Microsoft Creates Wild Half-Electron Quasiparticle for Its Future Quantum Computer

@Microsoft just announced a #quantumcomputing advancement today: a measurement that looks like an electron split in half in a piece of wire. It will be of central importance if the company hopes to create a working #quantumcomputer. Big companies like @IBM, @Google, and @Intel (and even a few startups) have built quantum computers with multiple qubits. It may appear that Microsoft is lagging behind—it hasn’t even debuted a single qubit yet! But Microsoft is working on its own quantum computer that incorporates brain-melting physics to overcome challenges plaguing the competitors. If it gets everything working, this could be a really big deal

Quantum computers are machines that use the basics of quantum physics, the physics of the smallest particles, to perform calculations difficult or impossible for regular computers to do. While you may have heard of machines with as many as Google’s 72 qubits, those are imprecise. The tiniest vibrations or energy from the outside environment could lead to an error in the calculation. But Microsoft’s ‘topological’ quantum computers might drastically reduce that noise. Its researchers are making some advances this year, including a paper published today in Nature, and they think they’ll have working qubits by the end of the year.

“One of our qubits will be as powerful as 1,000 or 10,000 of the noisier qubits,” Microsoft’s Julie Love, director of quantum computing business development, told me a few weeks ago in a Microsoft boardroom near New York’s Times Square.

Computers calculate with bits—two-state systems, like a coin that can either be heads or tails. A quantum bit, or qubit, is the same, except the coin is flipping in a black box during the calculation. You’re allowed to set some initial values on each side of the coin—complex numbers of the form a+bi like you learned about in high school that, when manipulated, output how likely the coin is to land on heads or tails. You only know the value of the coin when you open the box. Computation is done by putting several coins tied together in the box at the same time and interacting them in a way such that those initial values combine mathematically. The output now relies on all of the coins, which makes certain combinations of heads or tails more likely and certain ones forbidden.

https://gizmodo.com/how-will-microsofts-wild-electron-splitting-topological-1824142429

New Amulet Hotkey CoreStation Solutions Simplify Windows Migration and Enhance Compute Performance

For the first time, powerful @NVIDIA #Tesla #datacenter GPUs can be used in the industry leading @DellEMC #PowerEdge FX architecture. The #AmuletHotkeyCoreStation #VFC640 GPU accelerated blade server provides market leading densities and efficiency. It is a powerful and agile platform that can handle a broad range of workloads. Support up to 128 graphics accelerated virtual desktops to simplify migration to Windows 10. Use with compute frameworks or #HPC applications to enhance compute performance.... Unique architecture: combines @Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors and NVIDIA® Tesla® data center GPUs with the efficiency of blades, and the cost benefits of rack-based systems, to handle today's evolving workloads. Market leading density: drives efficiency and performance with up to 128 GPU accelerated virtual desktops across four dual-socket servers in only 2U of rack space. Powerful performance: to handle graphics and GPU accelerated compute for virtual workstation, high-performance computing, big data analytics, machine learning and deep learning. NEW YORK, March 27, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Amulet Hotkey Inc., a leader in design, manufacturing and system integration for remote physical and virtual workstation solutions, today announced a significant addition to the CoreStation blade family based on the Dell EMC PowerEdge FX architecture. For the first time, powerful NVIDIA Tesla data center GPUs can be used in the industry leading Dell EMC PowerEdge FX architecture. The Amulet Hotkey CoreStation VFC640 GPU accelerated blade server uses a unique PCIe expansion module and GPU card developed in collaboration with Dell EMC and NVIDIA product engineering teams. Two Amulet Hotkey DXF-EXP-V modules support up to eight NVIDIA Tesla P6 GPUs in the FX2 server chassis, while maintaining the benefits of the FC640 blades and FX2 architecture. The result is a powerful and agile platform that can handle a broad range of workloads. "The Amulet Hotkey CoreStation VFC640 expands upon the market leading blade workstation portfolio designed to meet the graphics and compute performance needs of professionals while driving customers' IT transformations," said Andrew Jackson, president, Amulet Hotkey Inc. "Our unique solution enables up to eight powerful GPUs, with up to four dual-socket servers in a PowerEdge FX2s chassis. Delivering this capability in an industry standard 2U rackmount form factor demonstrates our commitment to use innovative design and manufacturing to meet enterprise IT needs for a truly flexible and scalable computing architecture." "NVIDIA Tesla data center GPUs and NVIDIA virtual GPU software dramatically increase the graphics and compute performance of blade servers to handle evolving workflows with AI, photorealism and unlimited mobility," said Bob Pette, vice president, professional visualization, NVIDIA. "Customers working with large datasets, complex models or graphics-intensive productivity applications found in Windows 10 can leverage the benefits of high-density blades integrating multiple Tesla GPUs, NVIDIA virtualization software, Dell EMC OEM Solutions and Amulet Hotkey technology." "With the increasing adoption of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, customers are looking for enhanced compute solutions that optimize these workloads," said Ron Pugh, vice President and general manager for the Americas, Dell EMC OEM Solutions. "We are excited to work with Amulet Hotkey to develop game changing solutions for our customers that accelerate IT transformation.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-amulet-hotkey-corestation-solutions-simplify-windows-migration-and-enhance-compute-performance-678046863.html

Cloudera founder Mike Olson: ‘We’re moving from automating processes to automating decisions’

The growing momentum of big data in the cloud has been described as a threat to @Cloudera Inc., which is ironic given that the company’s original business plan was to sell big data as a cloud service. The market wasn’t ready in 2008, so Cloudera shifted to selling an integrated platform that combines various open-source projects with proprietary extensions. Of the three prominent startups to emerge from the @Hadoop ecosystem, the other two being @MapR Technologies Inc. and @Hortonworks Inc., Cloudera was the most prominent, in no small part because of the $740 million investment it received from @Intel Corp. in 2014. Its stock-market performance since going public last April has been underwhelming, but few would deny that it’s a market leader. Chief Strategy Officer Mike Olson, one of Cloudera’s four founders, joined SiliconANGLE recently for a telephone interview on where big data’s going next. Gartner has estimated that 85 percent of enterprise big data projects failed. Does that surprise you? I don’t understand who they’re talking to. We’re a high-growth company in the $300 million-plus forecast range and most of our business is still on-prem. People aren’t shutting down large football fields of Teradata [Corp.], but the opportunity was never to displace data warehouses. It was to capture more data than we could before and see what we could do if we had better tools to derive value. I think Gartner is comparing the wrong things. The growth rate of machine learning is zero if you compare it against traditional markets because there is no traditional market. But it has created value in huge new ways. It’s true that the biggest growth area has been in cloud databases like Cloudera Altus and Redshift on Amazon Web Services. We’ve believed since the early days that much of the action would be in cloud services, and that’s why we named the company Cloudera. We still believe that, but I think there’s enormous potential and success in on-prem deployments. Three years ago, Cloudera defined its mission around a unified platform built on Hadoop, the pioneering framework for managing big data. Today, you don’t even mention Hadoop in your description. What changed? We talked about Hadoop in the early days because people needed to know what the platform was and what we had. Today it’s a much richer environment. We’re seeing native machine learning using Spark integrated with AWS storage buckets. There’s no Hadoop in there. This platform is doing more than just what Hadoop did. Our original platform was Hadoop and MapReduce. Today, we ship 26 different open-source projects, 18 of which were created by Clouderans. Hadoop is always going to be part of the foundation of the company — and we’re proud that we spotted it so early — but it’s only a small part of what we do today.

https://siliconangle.com/blog/2018/03/13/cloudera-founder-mike-olson-moving-automating-processes-automating-decisions/