Andy Patrizio
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Andy Patrizio
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Why did Oracle acquire an SDN firm?
Every now and then, the industry gets hit with a “huh?” acquisition, like Facebook buying virtual reality headset maker Oculus or chipmaker Broadcom acquiring mainframe software vendor CA.Last week’s news from Oracle was also up there, with the announcement it plans to acquire Talari Networks, a software-defined networking (SDN) specialist, by the end of the year.It would seem an odd pairing, but Oracle has a considerable communications software business of mostly brokers, controllers, and monitors. In announcing the deal, the company said Talari would complement Oracle’s Session Border Controller (SBC) and network management infrastructure by adding high availability, Quality-of-Experience (QoE) connectivity, and cloud application access across any IP network with the reliability and predictability of private networks.To read this article in full, please click here
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Why did Oracle acquire an SDN firm?
Every now and then, the industry gets hit with a “huh?” acquisition, like Facebook buying virtual reality headset maker Oculus or chipmaker Broadcom acquiring mainframe software vendor CA.Last week’s news from Oracle was also up there, with the announcement it plans to acquire Talari Networks, a software-defined networking (SDN) specialist, by the end of the year.It would seem an odd pairing, but Oracle has a considerable communications software business of mostly brokers, controllers, and monitors. In announcing the deal, the company said Talari would complement Oracle’s Session Border Controller (SBC) and network management infrastructure by adding high availability, Quality-of-Experience (QoE) connectivity, and cloud application access across any IP network with the reliability and predictability of private networks.To read this article in full, please click here
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AMD’s road to the data center and HPC isn’t as long as you think
Last week, AMD announced it was ready to take on Nvidia in the GPU space for the data center, a market the company had basically ignored for the last several years in its struggle just to survive. But now, buoyed by its new CPU business, AMD is ready to take the fight to Nvidia.It would seem a herculean task. Or perhaps Quixotic. Nvidia has spent the past decade tilling the soil for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC0, but it turns out AMD has a few things in its favor.[ Learn who's developing quantum computers. ] For starters, it has a CPU and GPU business, and it can tie them together in a way Nvidia and Intel cannot. Yes, Intel has a GPU product line, but they are integrated with their consumer CPUs and not on the Xeons. And Nvidia has no x86 line.To read this article in full, please click here
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AMD’s road to the data center and HPC isn’t as long as you think
Last week, AMD announced it was ready to take on Nvidia in the GPU space for the data center, a market the company had basically ignored for the last several years in its struggle just to survive. But now, buoyed by its new CPU business, AMD is ready to take the fight to Nvidia.It would seem a herculean task. Or perhaps Quixotic. Nvidia has spent the past decade tilling the soil for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), but it turns out AMD has a few things in its favor.[ Learn who's developing quantum computers. ] For starters, it has a CPU and GPU business, and it can tie them together in a way Nvidia and Intel cannot. Yes, Intel has a GPU product line, but they are integrated with their consumer CPUs and not on the Xeons. And Nvidia has no x86 line.To read this article in full, please click here
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Gotcha pricing from the cloud pushes workloads back on premises
A new survey by cloud software vendor Nutanix finds that most firms are embracing the hybrid model, but few have actually achieved it. And many are shifting their workloads back on premises because of cloud costs.This was Nutanix’s first global Enterprise Cloud Index, so it doesn’t have historical data by which to measure, but its initial findings match what we’ve known for a while. Read also: How to make hybrid cloud work The hybrid cloud, a mix of on-premises and public cloud computing, working in tandem is the preferred method for most firms; 91 percent to be exact. But only 19 percent of firms surveyed said they have that model today. One reason is that app vendors make it hard to operate in hybrid mode, said Wendy Pfeiffer, CIO at Nutanix.To read this article in full, please click here
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Gotcha pricing from the cloud pushes workloads back on premises
A new survey by cloud software vendor Nutanix finds that most firms are embracing the hybrid model, but few have actually achieved it. And many are shifting their workloads back on premises because of cloud costs.This was Nutanix’s first global Enterprise Cloud Index, so it doesn’t have historical data by which to measure, but its initial findings match what we’ve known for a while. Read also: How to make hybrid cloud work The hybrid cloud, a mix of on-premises and public cloud computing, working in tandem is the preferred method for most firms; 91 percent to be exact. But only 19 percent of firms surveyed said they have that model today. One reason is that app vendors make it hard to operate in hybrid mode, said Wendy Pfeiffer, CIO at Nutanix.To read this article in full, please click here
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GPUs are vulnerable to side-channel attacks
Computer scientists at the University of California at Riverside have found that GPUs are vulnerable to side-channel attacks, the same kinds of exploits that have impacted Intel and AMD CPUs.Two professors and two students, one a computer science doctoral student and a post-doctoral researcher, reverse-engineered a Nvidia GPU to demonstrate three attacks on both graphics and computational stacks, as well as across them. The researchers believe these are the first reported side-channel attacks on GPUs.[ Read also: What are the Meltdown and Spectre exploits? | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ] A side-channel attack is one where the attacker uses how a technology operates, in this case a GPU, rather than a bug or flaw in the code. It takes advantage of how the processor is designed and exploits it in ways the designers hadn’t thought of.To read this article in full, please click here
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GPUs are vulnerable to side-channel attacks
Computer scientists at the University of California at Riverside have found that GPUs are vulnerable to side-channel attacks, the same kinds of exploits that have impacted Intel and AMD CPUs.Two professors and two students, one a computer science doctoral student and a post-doctoral researcher, reverse-engineered a Nvidia GPU to demonstrate three attacks on both graphics and computational stacks, as well as across them. The researchers believe these are the first reported side-channel attacks on GPUs.[ Read also: What are the Meltdown and Spectre exploits? | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ] A side-channel attack is one where the attacker uses how a technology operates, in this case a GPU, rather than a bug or flaw in the code. It takes advantage of how the processor is designed and exploits it in ways the designers hadn’t thought of.To read this article in full, please click here
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GPUs are vulnerable to side-channel attacks
Computer scientists at the University of California at Riverside have found that GPUs are vulnerable to side-channel attacks, the same kinds of exploits that have impacted Intel and AMD CPUs.Two professors and two students, one a computer science doctoral student and a post-doctoral researcher, reverse-engineered a Nvidia GPU to demonstrate three attacks on both graphics and computational stacks, as well as across them. The researchers believe these are the first reported side-channel attacks on GPUs.[ Read also: What are the Meltdown and Spectre exploits? | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ] A side-channel attack is one where the attacker uses how a technology operates, in this case a GPU, rather than a bug or flaw in the code. It takes advantage of how the processor is designed and exploits it in ways the designers hadn’t thought of.To read this article in full, please click here
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AMD now wants to take on Nvidia in the data center
There’s no doubt that AMD’s graphics business has kept the company afloat when its CPU business stunk. More than once I saw quarterly numbers that showed all the profitability was coming from the GPU side of the market.The split between it and Nvidia is about 2:1, according to Steam analytics. Nvidia just has tremendous momentum and hasn’t lost it. And it allowed the company to branch out into artificial intelligence (AI) so thoroughly that gaming has almost become secondary to the firm. Not that they are leaving gamers hanging; they just aren’t the top priority any more.With AMD on the upswing on the CPU side, the company has decided to finally stop ceding the whole data center to Nvidia. And this week it introduced two new GPUs with the data center and HPC/AI workloads in mind.To read this article in full, please click here
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AMD now wants to take on Nvidia in the data center
There’s no doubt that AMD’s graphics business has kept the company afloat when its CPU business stunk. More than once I saw quarterly numbers that showed all the profitability was coming from the GPU side of the market.The split between it and Nvidia is about 2:1, according to Steam analytics. Nvidia just has tremendous momentum and hasn’t lost it. And it allowed the company to branch out into artificial intelligence (AI) so thoroughly that gaming has almost become secondary to the firm. Not that they are leaving gamers hanging; they just aren’t the top priority any more.With AMD on the upswing on the CPU side, the company has decided to finally stop ceding the whole data center to Nvidia. And this week it introduced two new GPUs with the data center and HPC/AI workloads in mind.To read this article in full, please click here
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AMD continues server push, introduces Zen 2 architecture
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) revealed the Zen 2 architecture for its family of both desktop/laptop and server microprocessors that it plans to launch in 2019, with a promise of twice the performance throughput over the previous generation. The news came at a briefing in San Francisco that saw a number of AMD announcements.Zen is the core architecture. On the desktop and notebooks, it’s sold under the Ryzen brand name. For servers, it’s sold under the Epyc brand. The next generation of Epyc, code-named Rome, is due next year.Zen made AMD competitive with Intel once again after the disastrous line of subpar processors named after heavy equipment (Bulldozer, Piledriver, Steamroller). With Zen 2, AMD hopes to surpass Intel in all aspects of performance.To read this article in full, please click here
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AMD continues server push, introduces Zen 2 architecture
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) revealed the Zen 2 architecture for its family of both desktop/laptop and server microprocessors that it plans to launch in 2019, with a promise of twice the performance throughput over the previous generation. The news came at a briefing in San Francisco that saw a number of AMD announcements.Zen is the core architecture. On the desktop and notebooks, it’s sold under the Ryzen brand name. For servers, it’s sold under the Epyc brand. The next generation of Epyc, code-named Rome, is due next year.Zen made AMD competitive with Intel once again after the disastrous line of subpar processors named after heavy equipment (Bulldozer, Piledriver, Steamroller). With Zen 2, AMD hopes to surpass Intel in all aspects of performance.To read this article in full, please click here
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Intel responds to the Epyc server threat from AMD
I do love seeing the chip market get competitive again. Intel has formally announced a new class of Xeon Scalable processors, code-named “Cascade Lake-AP” or Cascade Lake Advanced Performance, that in many ways leapfrogs the best AMD has to offer.The news comes ahead of the Supercomputing 18 show and was likely done to avoid being drowned out in the upcoming news. It also comes one day ahead of an AMD announcement, which should be hitting the wires as you read this. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.The Cascade Lake-AP processors come with up to 48 cores and support for 12 channels of DDR4 memory, a big leap over the old design and a leap over AMD’s Epyc server processors, as well. Intel’s current top-of-the-line processor, the Xeon Platinum 8180, has only 28 cores and six memory channels, while the AMD Epyc has 32 cores and eight memory channels.To read this article in full, please click here
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Intel responds to the Epyc server threat from AMD
I do love seeing the chip market get competitive again. Intel has formally announced a new class of Xeon Scalable processors, code-named “Cascade Lake-AP” or Cascade Lake Advanced Performance, that in many ways leapfrogs the best AMD has to offer.The news comes ahead of the Supercomputing 18 show and was likely done to avoid being drowned out in the upcoming news. It also comes one day ahead of an AMD announcement, which should be hitting the wires as you read this. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.The Cascade Lake-AP processors come with up to 48 cores and support for 12 channels of DDR4 memory, a big leap over the old design and a leap over AMD’s Epyc server processors, as well. Intel’s current top-of-the-line processor, the Xeon Platinum 8180, has only 28 cores and six memory channels, while the AMD Epyc has 32 cores and eight memory channels.To read this article in full, please click here
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Is Oracle’s silence on its on-premises servers cause for concern?
When Oracle consumed Sun Microsystems in January 2010, founder Larry Ellison promised new hiring and new investment in the hardware line, plus a plan to offer fully integrated, turnkey systems.By and large, he kept that promise. Oracle dispensed with the commodity server market in favor of high-end, decked-out servers such as Exadata and Exalogic fully loaded with Oracle software, which included Java.Earlier this year, word leaked that the company had gutted its Solaris Unix and Sparc processor development, but after eight years of spinning its wheels, no one could say Oracle had been impatient. It had invested rather heavily in Sparc for a long time, but the writing was on the wall.To read this article in full, please click here
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Is Oracle’s silence on its on-premises servers cause for concern?
When Oracle consumed Sun Microsystems in January 2010, founder Larry Ellison promised new hiring and new investment in the hardware line, plus a plan to offer fully integrated, turnkey systems.By and large, he kept that promise. Oracle dispensed with the commodity server market in favor of high-end, decked-out servers such as Exadata and Exalogic fully loaded with Oracle software, which included Java.Earlier this year, word leaked that the company had gutted its Solaris Unix and Sparc processor development, but after eight years of spinning its wheels, no one could say Oracle had been impatient. It had invested rather heavily in Sparc for a long time, but the writing was on the wall.To read this article in full, please click here
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Cray introduces a multi-CPU supercomputer design
Supercomputer maker Cray announced what it calls its last supercomputer architecture before entering the era of exascale computing. It is code-named “Shasta,” and the Department of Energy, already a regular customer of supercomputing, said it will be the first to deploy it, in 2020.The Shasta architecture is unique in that it will be the first server (unless someone beats Cray to it) to support multiple processor types. Users will be able to deploy a mix of x86, GPU, ARM and FPGA processors in a single system.Up to now, servers either came with x86 or, in a few select cases, ARM processors, with GPUs and FPGAs as add-in cards plugged into PCI Express slots. This will be the first case of fully native onboard processors, and I hardly expect Cray to be alone in using this design.To read this article in full, please click here
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Cray introduces a multi-CPU supercomputer design
Supercomputer maker Cray announced what it calls its last supercomputer architecture before entering the era of exascale computing. It is code-named “Shasta,” and the Department of Energy, already a regular customer of supercomputing, said it will be the first to deploy it, in 2020.The Shasta architecture is unique in that it will be the first server (unless someone beats Cray to it) to support multiple processor types. Users will be able to deploy a mix of x86, GPU, ARM and FPGA processors in a single system.Up to now, servers either came with x86 or, in a few select cases, ARM processors, with GPUs and FPGAs as add-in cards plugged into PCI Express slots. This will be the first case of fully native onboard processors, and I hardly expect Cray to be alone in using this design.To read this article in full, please click here
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Rackspace launches disaster recovery as a service program
Give managed cloud computing provider Rackspace points for timing. Coming right after the Uptime Institute issued a warning for data center operators to improve their environmental disaster plans, the company announced it is broadening its existing disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) program for on-premises, colocation, and multi-cloud environments.The expansion utilizes Zerto’s disaster recovery software, which is specifically designed to provide business continuity and disaster recovery in a cloud and virtualized environment.To read this article in full, please click here