Microsoft has recently slotted yet another addition to its already populated Windows lineup. The Windows 10 Pro Workstation edition brings some trickled down features from the enterprise edition, namely resilient file system support, persistent memory, faster file sharing, and support for server grade hardware.

Resilient file system (ReFS) uses a host of techniques to make data more fault tolerant. It can automatically perform auto correction using mirrored storage space and integrity streams. It’s also optimized for handling large data volumes.

Persistent memory uses non-volatile memory modules (NVDIMM-N) to store data and is designed for applications [...]

After recently releasing the HP Omen X Compact Desktop designed for VR gamers, HP is back at it again with another VR backpack, this time at SIGGRAPH 2017 to release the professional oriented HP Z VR for VR developers and creative professionals.

The HP Z VR Backpack is fairly similar to the HP Omen X. The device itself is a sleek and thin unit that’s capable of morphing from backpack mode to a docked desktop workstation. Specifications on the HP Z VR include an Intel Core i7-7820HQ, 32GB DDR4 RAM, up to 1TB of storage and a Nvidia Quadro P5200 GPU, a new Nvidia flagship mobile workstation GPU currently available only on the HP Z [...]

Dell announced a massive refresh of its Precision line of workstations at SIGGRAPH 2017, marking the first refresh of the Precision lineup in five years.

Since it’s the 20 year anniversary for Dell’s workstation business, it’s only fitting to talk about Dell’s first workstation and to see how far they’ve come in the 20 years. Dell’s first workstation was the WorkStation 400, which came in a beige box packed with either one or two Intel Penium II processors running at either 266 MHz, 300 MHz or 333 MHz. The system took as much as 512 MB of RAM and ran Windows NT. In 1997, this was absolutely cutting edge [...]

Not long after the launch of its 15″ and 17″ Ubuntu mobile workstations, Dell is releasing another offering powered by Ubuntu, this time in the form of the Precision 5720 all-in-one.

The Precision 5720 features a 27″ 4K IPS Screen as well as a high-end sound bar. Users have the option of choosing between touch and non-touch displays.

Under the hood, the Dell Precision 5720 comes with Intel’s Core i5-7600, Core i7-7700, or Xeon E3-1275V6 CPU. Memory can be configured up to 64GB DDR4 ECC RAM clocked at 2,133MHz. The Precision 5720 supports one M.2 PCIe SSD and up to 2.5″ SATA drives in terms of storage. Graphics options [...]

IoT and machine learning are two of the fastest growing segments in the computing world and to help satiate the demand for ever more powerful hardware, more power efficient hardware, Nvidia announced the Jetson TX2 platform designed specifically for these applications.

Coming in a package that’s the size of an average credit card, the Jetson TX2 platform is twice as powerful as its predecessor, the Jetson TX1 platform, while sipping less than 7.5W of power.

SC16, the biggest annual supercomputing conference, is now taking place in Salt Lake City, Utah and one of the coolest new products being launched at the show is the Cray XC50 Supercomputer which Cray claims is able to reach over 1 petaflop of performance in a single cabinet.

In order to reach the 1 petaflop of compute performance, each one of Cray’s XC50 cabinets contain three chassis, which include 16 compute blades each. Each compute blade is then split into four nodes, each of which contain a Xeon CPU and a Nvidia Tesla P100 GPU Accelerator. By combining the total performance of 192 compute nodes, Cray’s XC50 is able to reach 902 teraflops through [...]

Samsung Electronics and SAP recently announced the grand opening of a new joint research center where they will conduct R&D for the next generation of in-memory database technology.

In-memory databases such as SAP’s HANA stores large databases in memory rather than in more traditional storage mediums. As memory is orders of magnitude faster and lower latency compared to even the latest in SSD technology, it allows companies to handle data processing and analysis significantly faster compared to traditional database technologies.

The new research center will allow the two companies to work closer on new in-memory technology research and its [...]

Although AMD’s upcoming consumer Zen CPU, codename Summit Ridge, has been all the talk in the past few months, an even bigger, more important chip coming down the pipeline is AMD’s upcoming 32-core Zen based chip, codename Naples. This is important because Intel’s most profitable sector is in the enterprise where they hold over 99% marketshare in the CPU market. With AMD planning to jump back into the market, it could significantly change the landscape especially considering their upcoming Zen architecture is promising massive gains in performance.

While AMD hasn’t released many official specifications or benchmark figures on its new CPU, [...]

A federal court in Northern California recently granted a preliminary injunction stopping the sale of SSD controllers sold by Canadian chipmaker, Diablo Technologies. The Diablo Technologies’ SSD controllers in question are most notably used in SanDisk’s ULLtraDIMM SSDs and IBM’s eXFlash modules. These SSDs exploit the much faster DRAM interface to achieve higher performance and lower latency than traditional non-volatile storage interfaces such as SATA, SAS, or PCIe.

The injunction was filed against Diablo Technologies by Netlist, a Southern California company who produces non-volatile memory modules similar to SanDisk’s ULLtraDIMM SSDs. [...]

A new ranking from Strategy& (PwC) has listed Samsung and Intel as 2014’s top technology R&D spenders, far exceeding the R&D investment of any other technology company on the market. Samsung and Intel are also second and third in terms of R&D spending overall across all industries with only Volkswagen outspending Samsung by a mere $0.9 billion ($100 million).

According to the ranking, Samsung has increased R&D spending to a whopping $13.4 billion this year from $10.4 billion last year while Intel spent a not-too-shabby $10.6 billion, up from the $10.1 billion spent last year.  This far exceeds the only other two major technology companies [...]