Technology Trends 2020 | Top Technology Trends

In our everyday lives, we rely on technology quite a bit, so it’s shocking when we realize that even with technology advancements happening so regularly, we often hardly notice them. Because of this, it’s even more difficult to keep up with the industry’s best advancements. At PSSC Labs, we find it imperative that we can keep abreast of the ever-changing technology landscape to determine what is really worthwhile and what is just marketing hype.

2021 is going to be an interesting year for the virtualization, HPC, AI and data center server spaces. We’ve outlined a few key technology advancements that will not only provide a step forward in the industry, but can actually deliver business value. This value is so often missed, but we believe it’s critical that companies adopt the best of the best technologies.

The CPU market started really shaping up in 2020. Despite being the year from our nightmares, industry leaders like Intel and AMD are pushing their technologies forward. At HPE Cast 2019, AMD revealed their 3^rd Generation Zen 3 based EPYC CPUs codenamed ‘Milan’ and it excited computer nerds like us around the globe. Here we breakdown everything you need to know about these new releases to keep you at the top of your HPC and AI game.

AMD Milan

Flagship product of the Zen 3 core architecture is the 3rd Gen EPYC line known as Milan. Early specs for a singular node reveal that the Milan CPU has 64 cores and 128 threads and AVX2 SIMD (256-bit). There is also support for 8-channel DDR ram and support for greater than 265 GB per node.

AMD unveiled plans for Zen 3 core generation codenamed Milan in 2019. The Zen 3 core is based on the 7nm+ processor node, allowing for 20% transistors than Zen 2’s 7nm process. The 7nm+ process node is also said to be built to deliver 10% better efficiency. AMD has highlighted that their processors offer much better performance per watt than industry players of similar caliber. AMD’s CTO, Mark Papermaster also revealed that Zen 3 is built on the foundations of Zen 2 (EPYC Rome) and will primarily leverage efficiency along with an uplift to overall performance.

Intel Ice Lake – CPU Family

Intel has been striving to build 10nm architecture processors for many years. In 2019, we saw the launch of the first Ice Lake laptops. But desktop 10nm chips still seemed quite distant, with Intel admitting that it has fallen years behind AMD in the race to ever smaller process technology and was considering skipping 10nm on desktop altogether.

Intel Ice Lake is using a new core architecture referred to as Sunny Cove. Sunny Cove delivers an increased IPC of up to 18%. This will likely result in pretty decent performance gains, but the jury is still out on whether Intel’s 10nm+ for servers can clock as high as other parts that were released around the same time. But when combined with software tweaks that allow for on-the-fly adjustments to memory frequency and screen refresh rate, Ice Lake-equipped laptops should be very energy efficient.

Intel confirmed there will be 10th Gen Intel Ice Lake Core processors in both the U-Series and Y-Series, with the former looking to generally offer higher frequencies while also consuming more power, consequently see battery life plummet quicker.

With these technology advancements in mind, we’re beginning to build our new product line and it’s coming soon. We are looking forward to utilizing these new technologies and others as they come to market in an effort to help government, military, higher education and commercial organizations achieve their business and organizational goals. Keep an eye out for our new releases coming soon