Systems news | The Register

REG AD

ON-PREM > SYSTEMS

Latest news and analysis of datacenter server systems

A deep dive into Nvidia's Vera CPU and the Olympus cores that power it

88 custom cores, 176 funky threads, 1.5 TB of laptop RAM, and 1.8 TB/s of NVLink connectivity — this isn't your typical datacenter chip

UK wants datacenters to pay a fee for grid connection requests

Refundable charge intended to discourage time wasters from filing applications that will never be realized

Close-up of green RAM memory modules arranged in a pile

Samsung warns memory crunch will last through 2028 as profit rises 19-fold

Tech giant counts record piles of cash while buyers face years of elevated prices

Cristiano Amon speaks onstage at a Qualcomm AI keynote, holding a device.

Qualcomm won’t be a big datacenter player anytime soon

But AI has come along just in time to cover being dumped by Apple

REG AD

Big Tech demanding deals that smooth out memory prices, says SK Hynix

Don't worry about an AI bust, monster profits and huge margins are here to stay

Intel knows it needs to ‘leapfrog’ ARM and AMD, says CEO Lip-Bu Tan

Chipzilla changes PC biz name to reflect belief edge and robots could be as valuable one day

AMD and Cerebras join forces against Nvidia’s Groq LPUs

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

AMD attacks the rack with Helios systems that rival Nvidia's

Spec for spec, the House of Zen's first rack-scale AI compute platform is bigger and faster than Nvidia's Vera Rubin by nearly every metric, but that's only on paper

Nvidia shows off Vera Rubin platform for tokenmaxxing

If your AI Factory sells tokens, why not optimize token emission?

Intel fortifies Foundry with an actual customer: Fortinet

Firewall maker looks to safeguard its custom ASIC production with homegrown silicon

Scalding hot AI accelerators have put datacenters in hot water. Two-phase cooling could chill them out

Startup Accelsius claims it can achieve up to 14° C cooler GPU temps by by converting a liquid-cooled Dell PowerEdge to run on refrigerants

Windows Server Update Services buckle under Microsoft's metadata mountain

Redmond has stabilized new installations, but existing deployments remain stuck in sync purgatory

REG AD

High hardware costs see Red Hat offer a two-server edge rig, no mini-PC required

Worries about ‘prohibitive cost of powering, maintaining, and deploying a third node’

Chinese memory ban would cut off RAMpocalypse relief

Two US lawmakers push tighter curbs on chipmakers from the Middle Kingdom

TSMC's $265B US fab pledge is the outline of a concept of a plan

Beware of fab makers bearing press releases

Big Blue thinks small, again, with POWER tower

The last proprietary minicomputer, now in ‘deskside’ form if you fancy that

HP laptop showing the Windows 11 desktop and taskbar on screen.

Microsoft flips Windows Backup to on by default unless you're in the EU

Everyone else must opt out manually if they don't fancy settings data shipped off-device

Samsung’s profits jump 19x in a year and you don’t need AI to figure out why

Share price down sharply, apparently amid fears the bubble is getting bigger

IBM teases new rackable mainframes that ‘complete’ the z17 family

UPDATED: Big Blue happy for users to BYO rack and slot Z machines alongside other tech

Madlad builds homebrew GPU using 8,192 RISC-V chips

The next version will have 32,000 MCUs

Ampera CEO Brian Matthews stands in front of the company's full-scale 3D printed nuclear reactor module.

Startup targets datacenters with 3D-printed nuclear reactor module

Fancy a thorium microreactor capable of delivering up to 30 MWe of juice for up to 30 years?

Qualcomm's proposed solution to catch up in AI infra: Bury the compute under the DRAM

With its next-gen AI accelerators, the SoC vendor aims to fly high above the memory wall

Zuck saves Meta bucks by reusing memory from old servers with a custom CXL ASIC

In production on millions of boxes and the payoff is a 25% reduction in machines needed for some inference workloads

Engineer accused of insider trading tied to Microsoft's reboot of Three Mile Island nuclear plant

SEC claims former Constellation employee made $1.4M trading options before the restart deal was announced

Man holding a semiconductor wafer manufactured using IBM's new sub-1 nm process

IBM stacks up a sub-nanometer chip future

Big Blue shows off process node it claims can scale down to 1 Angstrom

Hands holding a DDR3L RAM module in front of a blurred background.

Micron locks in historically high memory prices for five years

Big buyers agree to deals that will deliver historically enormous margins and profits

Qualcomm claims it's not too late for Dragonfly to land in datacenters

Oh, Snap(dragon): DC chief says the mobile-chip giant sees bit barns as its next growth market

OpenAI gets chippy with Broadcom

Jalapeño is the latest announcement that attempts to portray OpenAI as more than a race-to-the-bottom model maker

British Home Office seeks techie to herd nearly 1,000 engineers looking after 600 systems

£120k ... but you must take ultimate responsibility for functionality of e-gates, passports and more

Datacenters dip a toe back into waterborne computing despite obvious challenges

Floating or sub-surface bit barns are all the rage, but unlikely to compete with multi-gigawatt sites

REG AD

Nvidia gets all agentic about supercomputing for scientific research

Tireless AI agents could help scientists do research humans alone can't, says GPU giant

Tensordyne makes a big bet on log math to beat Nvidia

Who needs compute-hungry multiplications when you can just add logarithms

Uncle Sam bets $500M that Alphabet spinoff's AI can dig up new semiconductor materials

AI drug discovery is so last year, even though it hasn't accomplished much yet

Intel starts cooking up enhanced 18A-P silicon for would-be foundry customers

Chipzilla claims 9% speed bump without extra power draw but is compatible with designs for 18A

AMD's Mext buy shows how AI could solve the RAM shortage it created

Running low on memory, can't afford more? The House of Zen's latest acquisition puts an AI spin on flash-based memory expansion

There's no such thing as an agentic CPU

AI agents are a general-purpose workload no different from any other

REG AD

Microsoft faces down sueball, capacity problems in series of challenges

Misleading statements about Copilot and AI? Surely not!

Non-x86 servers now nearly half the market, IDC says

Demand for AI systems plus the shortage of DRAM and NAND are shaping the global market

Shark fin emerging from blue water near the surface.

Qualcomm said to be circling AI chip biz Tenstorrent in $10B RISC-V power play

Potential takeover would represent significant commitment to the open instruction set architecture

SK Hynix to boost memory production 3x ... you can wait another 8 years, right?

We're moving as fast as we can, says SK Group chair

Here's a look at Delos Data's reference design. The front of the system features 36 OSFP cages each capable of 1.6 Tbps of bandwidth.

Delos Data offers AI chip startups a fast track to rack scale

Half the trouble of building an Nvidia NVL or AMD Helios competitor is just getting the networking out of the box

Qualinx QLX3xx chip held in tweezers above a circuit board

Dutch chip startup claims all-European fab flow – with help from a very American friend

Satnav parts designed and manufactured in the EU, but using GlobalFoundries to produce them

Oracle's AI datacenter splurge gives investors the capex jitters

Q4 sales climbed 21%, but Wall Street more interested in $70B buildout bill

SpacemiT shows off usably quick RISC-V mini desktop

Actual RVA23 hardware and useful performance – for a certain price

Our systems editor flew all the way to Taiwan and still couldn't get away from AI

Every show now is an AI show, and that included this year's Computex

Here's a look at the index card sized compute nodes that make up Gigabyte's R1C7-KOA-AS1. Each packs 8-core Intel Lunar Lake mobile processor with 32 GB of memory and a pair of m.2 SSDs.

Gigabyte packs 40 Intel Lunar Lake PCs in a pizza box

Who needs one big CPU when you could have dozens of little ones?

AMD takes a third of server CPU market as shipments grow

Intel still owns the room, but Epyc keeps nicking the furniture

Intel bit off more than it could chew with 18A process node

CFO Zinsner insists the troubled node was a one-off as 14A stays on track

Macro Shot of a Silicon Wafer with Computer Chips during Manufacturing Process at Fab or Foundry. Semiconductor Wafer Texture.

US firms still dominate chip subsidies

China's support is greater relative to semiconductor industry revenue

Nvidia's Grace Blackwell superchips are officially coming to the PC with RTX Spark notebooks

Forget Wintel, we're living in a Winvidia world now

REG AD

If cores are what agents crave, Intel's new Clearwater Xeon 6+ might just quench their thirst

Chipzilla’s first 2nm-class Xeon is finally here bristling with 288 cores

Intel Diamond Rapids to boost core counts to 192, but RIP Hyperthreading

Threads on a half shell, Intel power!

Qualcomm picks bad time to pitch a $300 laptop platform

Systems based on Snapdragon C to target students, families, and small businesses

Alibaba gets Android 16 running on RISC-V

Beijing’s sovereign stack ambitions strengthen

A bright blue computer chip glowing on a circuit board with fine electronic traces.

Huawei's chip law looks less like Moore and more like marketing

Chinese tech biz shows off clever workaround for its process node gap, but it isn't catching up with Intel and TSMC

EU's digital sovereignty boo-boo may be the best thing to ever happen to the project

DIY or die. Just don't let the CIA buy it

Samsung memory workers call off strike and may score six-figure bonuses

PLUS: Huawei says it’s replaced Moore’s Law; Chinese mobile plans add token allowances; Singtel slinging Optus; And more!

Datacenter builders face an impossible quandary: Demand to the left of me, protests to the right

Wood Mackenzie analysts say bit barn operators are in a tough spot

UK nuclear investors get 'high' returns for lower risk than consumers, who also foot the bill

Sizewell C could add £19 to yearly bills, spending watchdog says, but private investor may fail to keep costs down

Alibaba T-Head M890 chip and Panjiu AL128 Supernode Servers

Alibaba just admitted it’s struggling to keep up with rival chipmakers and AI shops

Reveals decent new homegrown accelerator and tiny production volumes

SpaceX pitches itself as integrated interplanetary proto-monopolist in IPO filing

Aims for the stars while burning cash and blowing deadlines on Earth

GPU behemoth Nvidia on track to be world's leading CPU supplier too, says CFO

GPUzilla forecasts $20 billion in CPU revenues this year

AMD says its $4K Ryzen AI Halo workstation practically pays for itself

If you spend at least eight hours a day vibe coding that is

Intel's CEO reveals early hiring challenges as bankruptcy concerns deterred top talent

Recovering chipmaker looks beyond 14A to 10A and 7A process nodes in foundry comeback bid

Datacenter builds could be shielded from judicial review in UK planning reforms

British government wants to ensure no hold-ups for critical energy and infrastructure projects

Uncle Sam's next big supercomputer might use something more exotic than GPUs

Chip startup NextSilicon's high-performance-computing-focused accelerators get Sandia National Lab's stamp of approval

A glowing microchip with EU stars sits on a circuit board in a dark technological scene.

Europe built sovereign clouds to escape US control. Then forgot about the processors

Intel ME and AMD PSP: The silicon layer nobody certifies

On-call techie decided job was done and hit the bottle – just before his pager went off

Lazy weekend of Grand Prix fun turned into a terrifying all-nighter

Possible Samsung strike puts even more pressure on memory pricing

As a senior policymaker ponders whether all South Koreans should enjoy an ‘AI dividend’

Memory godboxes could offer relief from the RAMpocalypse

Amid the AI-fueled memory crunch, will Compute Express Link finally have its moment to shine?