Enterprise, Workstation, Data Center, Cloud, Networking, Software News And Reviews
In-depth product reviews and news of enterprise, workstation, networking, cloud, SMB, data center and software products and services.
AMD has gone on record saying it's "betting big on 7 nanometers" and the innovations that come with it. One of its upcoming 7nm products is "Rome," a next-generation Epyc processor that will be the world's first 7nm datacenter CPU, with increased instructions per clock (IPC) throughput and a big overall performance lift. Part of that performance lift will apparently come from having twice as much L3 cache as current-generation Epyc processors. How do we know this? AMD didn't offer up any specific details about Rome, at least not on a fine grain level. However, with a launch being imminent and with...
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Micron on Wednesday made a couple of announcements aimed at advancing the mobile memory and enterprise storage markets. Starting with the former, Micron said it has begun mass producing the industry's highest capacity monolithic memory for mobile devices and applications, and specifically 12-gigabit (Gb) low-power double data rate 4x (LPDDR4x) DRAM. The LPDDR4x DRAM is being produced on a 10-nanometer class process technology. Micron claims the new memory is capable of reducing power by up to 10 percent at similar data rates of 4,266 megabits per second (Mbps) compared to previous generation memory....
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There's no question that Intel has held a stranglehold on the enterprise CPU market with its family of Xeon processors. However, that all began to change last year with the introduction of AMD's first Zen-based EPYC processors which offered impressive performance at eyebrow-raising price points for potential customers. While AMD has gained some server market share thanks to EPYC, it is really looking to turn the tide with its second-generation EPYC products based on 7nm Zen 2 architecture. These new processors are part of the "Rome" family and are currently sampling to customers. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa...
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The brain is the most complex organ in the body and the most difficult to unravel. Scientists have developed a variety of ways to better understand the brain, including the use of supercomputers. The world’s largest neuromorphic supercomputer, the Spiking Neural Network Architecture (SpiNNaker), was just switched on for the first time yesterday. The mammoth array of server cabinets boasts one million processor cores and is able to perform 200 trillion actions per second. SpiNNaker has been twenty years and ￡15 million (nearly 19.5 million USD) in the making. The project was originally supported...
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Given all the hubbub concerning solid state drives (SSDs) these days, it's easy to forget that there's still a rather large market for traditional hard disk drives (HDDs). Western Digital clearly hasn't forgotten about the market, and is now claiming storage leadership with its new Ultrastar DC HC620. The Ultrastar DC HC620 is available in capacities of up to 15TB, which is just 1TB greater than the previous high watermark for currently shipping HDDs. The Ultrastar DC HC620 makes use of a 3.5-inch form-factor (SAS and SATA interface are available) and leverages second-generation...
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A senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit public interest organization, says Epson may be engaging in "deceptive" behavior by intentionally preventing third-party ink from working in its printers. According to the complaints EFF has received, Epson is doing this through firmware updates, though it's not clear what specific models might be affected. If true, it's easy to see why printer owners and organizations like the EFF would be miffed at Epson. Genuine printer ink is typically expensive, especially compared to what generic alternatives cost. There is a presumed...
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One aspect of smartphones that largely gets overlooked is security. For many consumers, the technical details surrounding stronger encryption just isn't as interesting as advancements in camera technology and other prominent features. For those who do care to know more, however, Google wrote a blog post describing its Titan M chip that is the backbone of security for its recently launched Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL handsets. "Last year on Pixel 2, we also included a dedicated tamper-resistant hardware security module to protect your lock screen and strengthen disk encryption. This year, with Pixel...
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Back in early April, Hewlett-Packed launched a revamped ZBook family of professional notebooks and convertibles available with Intel 8th generation Core and Xeon processors along with NVIDIA Quadro graphics. Today, HP has announced higher-performing versions of the ZBook Studio, ZBook Studio x360, ZBook 15a and ZBook 17. All of these machines are now available with 8th generation Core processors up to a Core i9-8950HK. Xeon processors also remain an option for those that require additional horsepower. As before, systems come configured with as little as 32GB of RAM or as much...
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Back in August, during SIGGRAPH, AMD announced the latest addition to its professional graphics card line-up, the Radeon Pro WX 8200. Like its predecessors, the Radeon Pro WX 8200 features the distinctive YInMn blue signature color of other Radeon Pro WX cards and is geared towards content creators and creative professionals. This latest addition to the line-up, however, is actually a slight step-down from the current flagship Radeon Pro WX 9100 – sort of. The two cards are both based on AMD’s Vega GPU architecture, but the core counts and memory configurations differ between the two....
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There are lots of computers out there that are still running Windows 7 even though Windows 10 has been out for a very long time and is now installed on 700 million devices globally. The reasons for staying on an old OS like Windows 7 are many and varied but some folks just feel their OS is working just fine and many end users don’t want to shell out money to replace something that isn't broken. In the enterprise realm, it can be a huge undertaking to move hundreds or thousands of PCs from one version of Windows to a new version, especially if there is proprietary software or apps that might...
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Samsung has become somewhat of a household name in the consumer solid state drive market—between its Pro and Evo drives, the company offers some of the fastest and best bang-for-buck options out there. Its newest SSDs, however, are aimed at data center customers and consist of several new models aimed at reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO). The new Data Center SSD solutions consist of the 860 DCT, 883 DCT, 983 DCT, and 983 ZET, each one "engineered to meet the evolving needs of small and medium businesses (SMBs)," which essentially entails faster sustained performance, higher capacities,...
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HP's EliteBook series laptops launched back in 2008 to general success, and a decade later it remains one of HP's top-selling thin and light laptop lines. To celebrate 10 years of that success, the company decided to completely redesigned their business class powerhouse notebook to cater to today's changing workforce. When first launched, baby boomers were still a force in the corporate world. Fast forward a decade, and many of those boomers are living out their golden years on the golf course, with millennials making up nearly half of the mainstream workforce in the United States currently. To...
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Mesh networking is starting to take a foothold in the home market, but the technology has actually been around for quite sometime. In fact, you have most likely been connected to a mesh network at some point in time without even realizing it. Hotels, universities, and malls have been using the tech for years to keep their students and customers seamlessly connected to the internet over large areas. The cost of setting up and maintaining a large, mesh network is worthwhile for the enterprise and major institutions, but for the rest of us -- until recently -- mesh networks have simply been out of...
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AMD has had some great momentum since it unleashed its first Zen-based processors to market early last year. A little while later, we saw EPYC hit the enterprise market and Threadripper hit soon thereafter, to cater to high-end enthusiasts and workstation users. Recently, the company followed-up its initial Ryzen release with second-gen parts, and Threadripper 2 is also en route and due in a couple of months (which includes a beastly, 32-core part). Based on what we're seeing right now, it doesn't appear this momentum is going to slow down anytime soon. We've already known for a...
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