The June 2024 Top500 supercomputer list was released at ISC 2024, and there is a lot to unpack. The latest Top 500 Supercomputers list highlights significant trends in the supercomputing landscape, as NVIDIA takes 7 spots with Grace-based systems, including 3 of the top 20. Although the balance between Intel and AMD remains static, there is a shift towards co-packaged CPUs and accelerators just as Intel announces they will sunset Ponte Vecchio, their entry in this space, and skip the next generation. Interestingly, HPE was a big winner here, leading in new systems and enabling 8 of the 10 Grace and MI300A entrants. And we see Arm well-represented here, with 8 new servers on the list.
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3:03 – Zscaler Reportedly Breached by Profit-Minded Criminals
Zscaler confirmed a breach by IntelBroker, who accessed a test environment unconnected to Zscaler’s production systems. The company asserts that no customer or production environments were affected, but IntelBroker says otherwise. The high-profile breach profiteer is offering sensitive data, including logs and SSL certificates, for $20,000 on Breached Forums.
Read More: Dark Web Informer on Mastodon
5:06 – Adam Selipsky Steps Down from AWS
Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky is stepping down on June 3 and will be succeeded by Matt Garman, the current Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Selipsky replaced Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in 2021 and came from Salesforce-owned Tableau. Garman, an AWS veteran who was previously anticipated to succeed Jassy, is expected to drive growth and innovation, particularly in AI, to keep pace with competitors like Microsoft and Google.
Read More: Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky to step down
7:45 – F5 BIG-IP Suffers a Big Breach
Critical vulnerabilities have been discovered in security firm F5’s BIG-IP Next Central Manager, a key component of the widely used BIG-IP appliances, posing significant security risks to some of the world’s largest networks. These vulnerabilities allow attackers to gain full administrative control, create hidden accounts, and extract sensitive data, making them particularly dangerous. F5 has released patches for two of these vulnerabilities, but three others remain unacknowledged.
Read More: Critical vulnerabilities in BIG-IP appliances leave big networks open to intrusion
9:53 – VMware Makes Workstation Pro and Fusion Free for Personal Use
It seems that there’s a new story every week about how Broadcom is restricting availability of VMware, but this week we have some good news. VMware Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro desktop will be free for personal use. These products, which allow users to run virtual machines on their personal computers, were key tools for IT pros for over a decade, and I’m sure they will appreciate this new price point. But of course commercial use still requires a fee.
Read More: VMware giving away Workstation Pro, Fusion Pro free for personal use
12:41 – GPT-4o Launched by OpenAI
OpenAI announced GPT-4o, their flagship AI model supporting multi-modal text, audio, and visual inputs/outputs. GPT-4o is available to all GPT users, including the free tier, with varying speed levels and number of prompt submissions. OpenAI’s GPT-4o launch included videos of people interacting with the service to perform functions such as preparing for a job interview. It includes natural language across modalities and real-time translation. While targeted with a mass market appeal, GPT-4o begs the question: Is this the new interface for business and consumer applications, replacing or augmenting web and mobile experiences?
Read More: OpenAI Launches GPT-4o and ChatGPT Gets More Conversational
15:05 – NetApp Announces New All-Flash Storage and StorageGRID for the AI Era
NetApp has announced new hardware and software enhancements aimed at supporting AI and cybersecurity, including high-end all-flash FAS A-Series arrays, ONTAP software, StorageGRID hardware, Cyber Vault immutable snapshots, and AI Pod integrations with Lenovo for Nvidia OVX systems. These advancements are designed to enhance performance, efficiency, and security for enterprise data storage solutions.
Read More: NetApp Updates Storage Portfolio with a Focus on AI
Read More: NetApp refreshes storage hardware, software for AI era
Read More: NetApp Cyber Vault Balances Snapshot Recovery with Logical Air Gapping
Read More: NetApp boosts StorageGRID performance, capacity
18:18 – Top500 Supercomputing
The latest Top 500 Supercomputers list highlights significant trends in the supercomputing landscape, as NVIDIA takes 7 spots with Grace-based systems, including 3 of the top 20. Although the balance between Intel and AMD remains static, there is a shift towards co-packaged CPUs and accelerators just as Intel announces they will sunset Ponte Vecchio, their entry in this space, and skip the next generation. Interestingly, HPE was a big winner here, leading in new systems and enabling 8 of the 10 Grace and MI300A entrants. And we see Arm well-represented here, with 8 new servers on the list.
Read More: Intel Aurora Passes into the Exa-sphere in the Top500
Read More: NVIDIA Grace Hopper Ignites New Era of AI Supercomputing
31:55 – The Weeks Ahead
Mobility Field Day 11 – May 15 – 16
AppDev Field Day 1 – May 29 – 30
Tech Field Day Experience at Qlik Connect – June 3 – 5
The Six Five Summit – June 11 – 13
Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.
The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.
