Pixelgen Design announces PXLGLASS-- a hybrid copper/fibre cabling solution designed to deliver uncompressed 18Gbps signals across distances reaching up to 50m.

Described by the company as the first fibre-based long reach 4K interconnect solution with THX certification, PXLGLASS delivers 100% uncompressed 4K signals and the full HDMI feature set. To do so it uses a unique copper/fibre hybrid cable implementation, with optical fibres carrying high-speed TMDS signals while copper-based wires carry critical low-speed communication signals such as HDCP 2.2 and CEC 2.0.

Cray reunites with AMD as it announces the addition of Epyc processors in the CS500 cluster supercomputer line, all based on ulra-dense 2-way servers offering up to 64 cores, HDD/SSD and high-speed networking.

“Cray’s leadership in supercomputing is well known and AMD is thrilled to be working with them on the CS500 cluster system,” AMD says. “Cray is the first system vendor to offer an optimised programming environment for AMD EPYC processors, which is a distinct advantage. Combining AMD Epyc processors with Cray’s supercomputing expertise opens new opportunities for both companies to grow.”

Nortek Security & Control (NSC) launches a line of Xantech HDMI distribution solutions-- including extenders, splitters and switchers, matrix switchers and distribution amps.

Better known as a control accessory maker, Xantech is pushing into video with products centered around sending HDMI signals longer distances, as well as solving quirky HDMI routing issues.

The line offers 3 extenders-- the XT-HDBT-EX100-4K18G-KIT, a 4K HDBaseT extender able to deliver HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2 support, bi-directional IR, RS-232 and PoH (PoE) up to 70m at 4K (100m at 1080p) over a single CAT cable, the XT-HDBT-EX70-4K-KIT (4K HDBaseT solution delivering HDMI with HDCP 2.2 support, bi-directional IR and PoH (PoE) up to lengths of 40m at 4K (70m at 1080p) over a single CAT cable) and the slim-line XT-CAT-EX40-KIT (provides HDMI and bi-directional IR distribution over a single CAT cable up to lengths of 40m @ 1080p and 50m @ 1080i).

The adoption of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) in servers is going mainstream, Intel claims-- both Dell EMC and Fujitsu are putting Arria 10 GX Programmable Acceleration Cards in off-the-shelf datacentre servers.

As Intel puts it, "FPGAs are the foundation for a new type of datacentre with the versatility and speed to handle a variety of workloads." Customers can customise FPGAs post-manufacturing to act as accelerators, particularly for tasks making heavy use of parallel processing such as machine learning, specialised financial applications, video transcoding and genomics. Currently such workloads are handled by GPUs, but FPGAs allow developers to close unused gates to optimise the amount of power a specific task requires.