Some of the biggest names in the HPC and hyperconvergence space are banding together to standardize Ethernet. The new Ultra Ethernet Consortium counts AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, HPE, Intel, and others as founding members. Chairman J. Metz says the goal of the consortium is to tune Ethernet for workloads with specific performance requirements. The companies involved are selling very high speed Ethernet focused on HPC and AI workloads. Notably absent in the list is NVIDIA.
Live events are back, baby! It’s event season, and hotels are filling up for in-person tech events. But the pandemic has changed everything, including event participation. What should we expect from returning favorites like re:Invent, in-flux standbys like VMware Explore, and smaller events like Flash Memory Summit? This and more on this week’s Gestalt IT Rundown.
0:49 – Stampede3 and Condor Galaxy-1 Show the Future of HPC and AI
In the realm of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence, two groundbreaking projects are set to redefine computational capabilities. The upgrade to Stampede2, now Stampede3, at TACC promises enhanced performance with a hybrid architecture of Intel CPUs and “Ponte Vecchio” Max Series GPU accelerators, funded by the US NSF. On the AI front, Cerebras Systems and G42’s partnership introduces the massive Condor Galaxy-1 cluster with 27 million cores and 41 TB of SRAM memory, driving AI models with up to 600 billion parameters. These projects embody the pursuit of excellence and have the potential to revolutionize scientific discoveries and innovations. What do we make of these two very different supercomputers?
Read More: In G42, Cerebras Finds the Deep Pockets and Partnership it Needs to Grow
Read More: Stampede3: A Smaller HPC System that will Get More Work Done
7:05 – SEC Sets Four Day Deadline for Breach Disclosures
The SEC has decided that companies need to notify investors about security breaches quicker. New rules handed down from the oversight organization say that public traded companies must disclose material incidents within four days of the determination. The companies must include the date of the incident, what data was compromised, and what the remediation efforts are. The only exception is if the US Attorney General determines disclosure would hamper an ongoing investigation. Tom, does this move force the hands of companies trying to keep things quiet?
Read More: SEC now requires companies to disclose cyberattacks in 4 days
10:14 – Lightbend introduces Kalix
Lightbend introduced Kalix, a new offering focused on building distributed backend applications with an emphasis on event-driven architecture and serverless capabilities. Kalix abstracts away the complex proprietary cloud services with an opinionated event-driven and stateful platform, automatically scaling as microservices. Will this sort of abstraction attract enterprise developers or will they keep trying to use all those AWS services?
Read More: Build high-performance, cloud-native microservices and APIs
14:13 – Ultra Ethernet Consortium Founded
Some of the biggest names in the HPC and hyperconvergence space are banding together to standardize Ethernet. The new Ultra Ethernet Consortium counts AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, HPE, Intel, and others as founding members. Chairman J. Metz says the goal of the consortium is to tune Ethernet for workloads with specific performance requirements. The companies invovled are selling very high speed Ethernet focused on HPC and AI workloads. Notably absent in the list is Nvidia. Tom, why do we need another consortium for Ethernet?
Read More: Leading Cloud Service, Semiconductor, and System Providers Unite to Form Ultra Ethernet Consortium
17:24 – Dell and Nvidia Team Up For On-Prem AI
Dell Technologies and NVIDIA have partnered to launch Project Helix, an initiative designed to create a secure on-premises environment for generative AI training. The joint effort is a complete blueprint and a series of full-stack solutions based on Dell and NVIDIA infrastructure and software leveraging Dell PowerEdge servers and NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs and Networking. Will this collaboration give enterprises a new AI option or is it too little in the face of the emerging AI clouds?
Read More: Dell Technologies and NVIDIA Introduce Project Helix for Secure, On-Premises Generative AI
21:51 – AWS Now Charging for Public IPv4 Addresses
Amazon has announced they will now be charging for IPv4 addresses on instances. Previously AWS did not charge for the primary address but did charge for secondary IPs as well as idle addresses on the account that weren’t in use. Amazing cited rising costs for the addresses, with prices having risen over 300% in the last five years. The price for an address will be half a cent per hour. The AWS Free Tier has 750 hours of usage per month included but only for the first 12 months. Tom, will this change encourage users to migrate to IPv6?
Read More: New – AWS Public IPv4 Address Charge + Public IP Insights
24:46 – VAST Data Platform Announcement
VAST Data introduced their DataPlatform, an AI-focused offering that adds database technology to traditional storage to support AI-assisted computation. The platform includes components like VAST DataStore for scalable storage of unstructured data, VAST DataBase for real-time analytics, VAST DataEngine for fast queries, and VAST DataSpace for seamless data storage across different environments. Will VAST be able to win over customers developing data and AI applications, or will this crossover fail to find its audience?
Read More: VAST is Back with Emphasis on Data and AI
29:30 – Who’s Ready for Event Season?
Live events are back, baby! It’s event season, and hotels are filling up for in-person tech events. But the pandemic has changed everything, including event participation. What should we expect from returning favorites like re:Invent, in-flux standbys like VMware Explore, and smaller events like Flash Memory Summit?
BlackHat and DEFCON – August 5-10, 2023
Flash Memory Summit – August 8-10, 2023
VMware Explore US and Tech Field Day Extra – August 21-24, 2023
VMware Explore in Barcelona – November 6-9, 2023
SNIA SDC and Storage Field Day 26 – September 18-21, 2023
Mobile World Congress and Edge Field Day 2 – October 5, 2023
OCP Summit and Cloud Field Day 18 – October 17-19, 2023
ONUG Fall and Networking Field Day 33 – October 25-26, 2023
Information Security Summit Cleveland – October 23-27, 2023
SC23, Data Field Day 2, and AI Field Day 4 – November 12-17, 2023
Mobility Field Day 10 – November 15-17, 2023
KubeCon – November 6-9, 2023
AWS re:invent – November 27-December 1, 2023
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.
