IBM and Facebook parent company Meta have decided to advocate for a more open approach to AI. They’ve announced a joint AI Alliance group. The companies are part of a growing trend that sees advocates arguing that AI shouldn’t be proprietary and closed. Also signing on to the alliance are Dell, Sony, AMD, Intel, and several other AI startups. The group seems to stand in opposition to companies like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft who are focused on creating AI rules that favor outcomes that will put them on top, as well as top dog NVIDIA.
0:55 – VAST Data Upgraded in Two Ways
VAST Data is claiming a big upgrade and has landed a fresh funding round at the same time. The new version 5.0 platform include multi-protocol and unified namespaces in AWS for a claimed 80% cost advantage over EFS. The new software also intelligent anomaly detection and log analytics. And the company also bagged a $118 million Series E round today, boosting valuation over $9 billion. VAST just keeps getting bigger!
Read More: VAST Data claims vast cost-saving over Elastic File Service in Amazon’s cloud
3:29 – Intel Gets Reprieve from VLSI Patent Ruling
A US appeals court tossed out a ruling this week that would have seen chipmaker Intel liable for over $2 billion in damages regarding patents on Ivy Bridge and Skylake. The patents involve memory voltages and clock speed control. While VLSI was formerly heavily involved in chip development in the 80s and 90s the current form of the company acquired the patents through purchase from NXP by way of Freescale and has successfully litigated infringement cases against Intel in the past few years. The appeals court held there was infringement on one of the patents but threw out the judgement on the second in order to hold a new trial.
Read More: Intel scores a reprieve in $2.18B VLSI patent case after court orders retrial
6:22 – Meta Takes On All the RISC-V
Meta announced at this week’s RISC-V summit that they’re all-in on the new chip architecture. Meta started looking at integrating RISC-V into their systems four years ago and the work seems to be going well. Meta will use the chips for video transcoders, inference accelerators, and AI training systems. The goal is to move any workload that needs acceleration onto a RISC-V based system.
Read More: META Sees Little Risk in RISC-V Custom Accelerators
10:26 – Aviz Networks Gets Funding Round
Aviz Networks announced this week that they have just closed a new funding round of $10 million. The startup is focused on providing support for the open source SONiC network operating system. The funding round was lead by Cisco Investments. Aviz has products focused on installation of SONiC as well as practical uses, such as packet brokering and fabric testing.
Read More: Cisco helps fund Aviz Networks’ SONiC network OS support efforts
13:45 – NetApp Revs FSx for ONTAP in AWS
NetApp and AWS have unveiled scale-out FSx for ONTAP file systems at re:Invent, boasting a ninefold increase in storage performance for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP compared to existing systems. The scale-out file systems provide benefits such as multi-protocol data access, efficient snapshot copies, and replication for data protection, catering to organizations seeking improved performance and scalability for their cloud workloads.
Read More: NetApp and AWS Deliver a Nine Times Performance Increase for Amazon FSX for NetApp ONTAP
16:24 – Broadcom Issues Return to Office Order for VMware
Broadcom may have only just closed the acquisition of VMware but the changes are already in the air. In addition to new email addresses and lots of LinkedIn updates, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan was pretty up front last week when he ordered VMware employees to return to the office. The direct quote was “If you live within 50 miles of an office, get your butt in here”. Broadcom has also announced potential layoffs of at least 2,800 employees with more possible.
22:10 – IBM and Meta’s AI Alliance Launched This Week
IBM and Facebook parent company Meta have decided to advocate for a more open approach to AI. They’ve announced a joint AI Alliance group. The companies are part of a growing trend that sees advocates arguing that AI shouldn’t be proprietary and closed. Also signing on to the alliance are Dell, Sony, AMD, Intel, and several other AI startups. The group seems to stand in opposition to companies like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft who are focused on creating AI rules that favor outcomes that will put them on top, as well as top dog NVIDIA.
Read More: The AI Alliance
Read More: Meta and IBM launch ‘AI Alliance’ to promote open-source AI development
35:52 – The Weeks Ahead
Cloud Field Day 19 – January 31 – February 1
Cisco Live EMEA – February 6 – February 7
AI Field Day 4 – February 21 – February 22
Networking Field Day 34 – February 28 – February 29
The Gestalt IT Rundown is a live weekly look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.
