Global server revenues are up by 16% Y-o-Y in Q3 2017, Gartner reports, while shipments show 5.1% Y-o-Y growth-- making a period of continued growth, if with "varying regional results."

A main driver for the period is the build-out of infrastructure to support cloud and hybrid-cloud implementations. As such, x86 server shipments are up by 5.3% Y-o-Y with revenues growing by 16.7%, while RISC/Itanium Unix servers are down 2.3% Y-o-Y in shipments and 18.3% Y-o-Y in revenues.

The "other" CPU category-- primarily consisting of mainframes-- shows a 54.5% Y-o-Y  increase.

Dell EMC presents the next generation of rugged PowerEdge XR servers-- the PowerEdge XR2, designed for use in harsh environments, including industrial sites or even conflict zones.

The 1U chassis housing the XR2 features shock and vibration resistance, optional dust filtration and components certified to work in temperatures ranging from -5ºC to +55ºC as well as altitudes of up to 15K feet. Inside are two Xeon Gold (Skylake-SP) processors with up to 22 cores, 30MB L3 cache and a 140W TDP.

Customers can equip the primary CPU socket with 10 DIMMs (4 channels at 2 DPC and 2 channels at 1 DPC) and the secondary CPU socket with 6 DDR4 memory modules (6 channels at 1 DPC) for a potential 512GB of DRAM per box. Such an amount might appear low compared to current servers, but Dell only uses DIMMs certified for severe environments which are currently limited to 32GB per module.

The HDMI Forum announces version 2.1 of the HDMI specification-- an update promising support for a range of higher video resolutions and refresh rates, including 8K60 and 4K120.

Version 2.1 handles resolutions up to 10K, together with dynamic HDR formats. Bandwidth capability is increased to 48Gbps through a Ultra High Speed HDMI Cable able to handle uncompressed 8K video with HDR with exceptionally low EMI (electro-magnetic interference) and backwards compatibility with existing HDMI devices.

Sckipio breaks a performance record at the Broadband World Forum-- a demo featuring 3.21Gbps of download and 900Mbps of upload on production silicon using Gfast bonding running at 212MHz.

Developed in partnership with software vendor Civica, the demo was done over two bonded pairs of CAT-3 wiring (aka regular copper telephone wires). Also used are the Sckipio SCK23000 chipset, Civica WanStaX software and the Microsemi WinPat network processor. The result, as the company puts it, is an Amendment 3 Gfast solution able to exceed the performance targets of the near future.

“Sckipio is pushing Gfast to astonishing speeds with production silicon,” CEO David Baum adds. “No other Gfast solution delivers end-to-end 212a profile bonding.”