Join us as we discuss Nvidia’s 2021 GTC announcements and many other stories on this week’s Rundown!
PHP Git Server Hacked to Add Backdoors
The PHP Git repository was hacked a couple of weeks ago and now people are asking questions. The innocuous commit messages were pushed under the name of founder Rasmus Lerdorf and seemed to indicate a typographic error change. However, further analysis revealed an attempted remote code execution insertion in the code. After the discovery of the hacking attempt on the private Git repository, PHP maintainers retired the server and indicated the mirrored repos on Github were now the primary source files. The word from PHP maintainer Nikita Popov is that the private server will be decommissioned and the project will use Github exclusively in the future.
Chinese Supercomputing Companies Added to Blacklist
The US government announced this week that a list of Chinese supercomputer builders have been placed on an export restriction list. The report says that the Feds are worried that the firms are assembling advanced technology for the use of the Chinese military. The Washington Post also reported that Synopsis had contracts with one of the named firms and would be restricted from selling their technology without special dispensation from the government.
Microsoft Says “YES” to Nuance
Microsoft shouted out loud that it wants to continue the trend of voice recognition and natural language communications. They are buying Nuance Communications for $16 billion plus around $3 billion in debt. That’s a 23% premium over the share price. The company’s primary focus in today’s market is transcription of doctor’s visits in Telehealth and in-person visits. The move is seen as both a bolster for the recently announced healthcare tech push from Microsoft as well as a growth move aimed at increasing the footprint of the tech giant.
To say that Nvidia is the new silicon gorilla is really under-selling things. They’re everywhere, from HPC to AI, but the enterprise has been a little slower to reach the datacenter. This year’s GTC seemed to admit this, with a renewed focus on partnerships and collaboration to bring Nvidia to the enterprise.
Nvidia Launches Bluefield 2 at GTC
The enterprise IT industry is buzzing about network offload cards and VMware’s Project Monterey. Variously known as SmartNICs or DPUs, these cards promise to offload network data processing before it ever reaches the CPU. Nvidia recently acquired Mellanox, and the crown jewel was their Bluefield DPUs. Now we have a release version of the Bluefield 2 and a tease of the Bluefield 3.
Nvidia wrapped up GTC with “one more thing” and everyone is buzzing about it. Along with their familiar GPUs and new DPUs, they announced an Arm CPU called Grace. Pundits are saying this is a direct challenge to Intel and AMD, but is that really what’s going on here?
The Gestalt IT Rundown is a live weekly look at the IT news of the week. It broadcasts live on Facebook every Wednesday at 12:30pm ET. To watch along, “Like” our Facebook page. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.
