After months of speculation that Microsoft was developing its own semiconductors, the company at its annual Ignite conference Wednesday took the covers off two new custom chips, dubbed the Maia AI Accelerator and the Azure Cobalt CPU, which target generative AI and cloud computing workloads, respectively. The new Maia 100 AI Accelerator, according to Microsoft, will power some of the company's heaviest internal AI workloads running on Azure, including OpenAI’s model training and inferencing workloads. To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

Intel kicked off the Supercomputing 2023 conference with a series of high performance computing (HPC) announcements, including a new Xeon line and Gaudi AI processor. Intel will ship its fifth-generation Xeon Scalable Processor, codenamed Emerald Rapids, to OEM partners on December 14. Emerald Rapids features a maximum core count of 64 cores, up slightly from the 56-core fourth-gen Xeon. In addition to more cores, Emerald Rapids will feature higher frequencies, hardware acceleration for FP16, and support 12 memory channels, including the new Intel-developed MCR memory that is considerably fast ..read more

While 95% of businesses are aware that AI will increase infrastructure workloads, only 17% have networks that are flexible enough to handle the complex requirements of AI. Given that disconnect, it’s too early to see widespread deployment of AI at scale, despite the hype. That's one of the key takeaways from Cisco’s inaugural AI Readiness Index, a survey of 8,000 global companies aimed at measuring corporate interest in and ability to utilize AI technologies. To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

A lack of cloud management skills could be limiting in-house innovation and the benefits enterprises gain from implementing public cloud exclusively, driving more IT organizations to invest in hybrid cloud environments, according to recent research.  In one survey, software vendor Parallels polled 805 IT professionals to learn more about how they use cloud resources. The responses showed that a technical skills gap continues to concern many organizations deploying cloud. Some 62% of survey respondents said they viewed the lack of cloud management skills at their organization as a “major r ..read more

To get started as a Linux (or Unix) user, you need to have a good perspective on how Linux works and a handle on some of the most basic commands. This first post in a “getting started” series examines some of the first commands you need to be ready to use. On logging in When you first log into a Linux system and open a terminal window or log into a Linux system from another system using a tool like PuTTY, you’ll find yourself sitting in your home directory. Some of the commands you will probably want to try first will include these: pwd -- shows you where you are in the file system right now ..read more

Ransomware is a growing threat to organizations, according to research independently conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group and sponsored by Zerto, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. According to the report, 2023 Ransomware Preparedness: Lighting the Way to Readiness and Mitigation, 75% of organizations experienced ransomware attacks in the last 12 months, with10%  facing daily attacks.[i] 46% of organizations experienced ransomware attacks at least monthly—with 11% reporting daily attacks. To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

Cisco is taking a collaborative approach to helping enterprise customers build AI infrastructures. At its recent partner summit, Cisco talked up a variety of new programs and partnerships aimed at helping enterprises get their core infrastructure ready for AI workloads and applications. “While AI is driving a lot of changes in technology, we believe that it should not require a wholesale rethink of customer data center operations,” said Todd Brannon, senior director, cloud infrastructure marketing, with Cisco’s cloud infrastructure and software group.  To read this article in full, please ..read more

LiquidStack, one of the first major players in the immersion cooling business, has entered the single-phase liquid cooling market with an expansion of its DataTank product portfolio. Immersion cooling is the process of dunking the motherboard in a nonconductive liquid to cool it. It's primarily centered around the CPU but, in this case, involves the entire motherboard, including the memory and other chips. Immersion cooling has been around for a while but has been something of a fringe technology. With server technology growing hotter and denser, immersion has begun to creep into the mainstrea ..read more

Frontier maintained its top spot in the latest edition of the TOP500 for the fourth consecutive time and is still the only exascale machine on the list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. Newcomer Aurora debuted at No. 2 in the ranking, and it’s expected to surpass Frontier once the system is fully built. Frontier, housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tenn., landed the top spot with an HPL score of 1.194 quintillion floating point operations per second (FLOPS), which is the same score from earlier this year. A quintillion is 1018 or one exaFLOPS (EFLOPS). Th ..read more

As digital landscapes evolve, so does the definition of network performance. It's no longer just about metrics; it's about the human behind the screen. Businesses are recognizing the need to zoom in on the actual experiences of end-users. This emphasis has given rise to advanced tools that delve deeper, capturing the essence of user interactions and painting a clearer picture of network health. The rise of End-User Experience (EUE) scoring End-User Experience (EUE) Scoring has emerged as a game-changer in the realm of network monitoring. Rather than solely relying on traditional metrics like l ..read more