Andy Patrizio

Author Archives: Andy Patrizio

Iron Mountain acquires ITRenew in sustainability move

Iron Mountain has been around for 60 years, and it's well known for providing storage and information management services that protect critical business assets and highly sensitive data. But it's probably is not the first name that comes to mind when you think of IT hardware. That’s not for lack of trying. Since 2017, Iron Mountain has invested more than $2 billion in building and buying data centers. It has a total of 18 around the world, and those data centers are powered by 100% renewable energy.Now it’s making inroads into the broader data-center supply chain with the acquisition of ITRenew, which specializes in IT asset disposal. With ITRenew, Iron Mountain sees opportunities to enhance the value of its environmental, social and governance offerings.To read this article in full, please click here

Iron Mountain acquires ITRenew in sustainability move

Iron Mountain has been around for 60 years, and it's well known for providing storage and information management services that protect critical business assets and highly sensitive data. But it's probably is not the first name that comes to mind when you think of IT hardware. That’s not for lack of trying. Since 2017, Iron Mountain has invested more than $2 billion in building and buying data centers. It has a total of 18 around the world, and those data centers are powered by 100% renewable energy.Now it’s making inroads into the broader data-center supply chain with the acquisition of ITRenew, which specializes in IT asset disposal. With ITRenew, Iron Mountain sees opportunities to enhance the value of its environmental, social and governance offerings.To read this article in full, please click here

Equinix expands adds more processors to its bare-metal service

Data-center giant Equinix has expanded its bare-metal services to offer CPU, GPU, and AI processors on its Equinix Metal service offering.The service now includes AMD’s Milan generation of Epyc processors, Ampere’s Arm-based Altra, and Intel’s Ice Lake generation of Xeon processors.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] In November, Nvidia and Equinix announced an expanded collaboration to bring Nvidia’s LaunchPad AI platform, which includes instant, short-term access to AI infrastructure, to nine Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers globally. Enterprise accounts can test AI apps on LaunchPad, then deploy and scale on Equinix Metal or Nvidia DGX Foundry, which are also running at Equinix. To read this article in full, please click here

Equinix expands adds more processors to its bare-metal service

Data-center giant Equinix has expanded its bare-metal services to offer CPU, GPU, and AI processors on its Equinix Metal service offering.The service now includes AMD’s Milan generation of Epyc processors, Ampere’s Arm-based Altra, and Intel’s Ice Lake generation of Xeon processors.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] In November, Nvidia and Equinix announced an expanded collaboration to bring Nvidia’s LaunchPad AI platform, which includes instant, short-term access to AI infrastructure, to nine Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers globally. Enterprise accounts can test AI apps on LaunchPad, then deploy and scale on Equinix Metal or Nvidia DGX Foundry, which are also running at Equinix. To read this article in full, please click here

Intel teams with hardware vendors for high-performance network card

Intel announced a collaboration with Inspur, Ruijie Networks, and Silicom Connectivity Solutions to design and develop new infrastructure processing units (IPU) using both a CPU and FPGA.IPU--what Intel calls a data-processing unit (DPU)--is a programmable networking device designed to offload network processing tasks such as storage virtualization, network virtualization, and security from the CPU. That reduces overhead and frees up the CPU to focus on its primary data-processing functions. They are becoming a real growth industry, with multiple products on the market from Nvidia, Marvell, Fungible, and Xilinx.To read this article in full, please click here

Intel, hardware vendors working on a high-performance network card

Intel announced a collaboration with Inspur, Ruijie Networks, and Silicom Connectivity Solutions to design and develop new infrastructure processing units (IPU) using both a CPU and FPGA.IPU—what Intel calls a data-processing unit (DPU)—is a programmable networking device designed to offload network processing tasks such as storage virtualization, network virtualization, and security from the CPU. That reduces overhead and frees up the CPU to focus on its primary data-processing functions. They are becoming a real growth industry, with multiple products on the market from Nvidia, Marvell, Fungible, and Xilinx.To read this article in full, please click here

AMD: The Phoenix of tech

Five years ago, AMD was hanging on by a thread. Sales had dropped below $1 billion per quarter. Its client and server CPUs were no longer competitive with Intel’s. Its Opteron server-CPU market share was less than one percent. Its GPU products were a little better but Nvidia had the mindshare.Then two things happened: Dr. Lisa Su ascended to the CEO position, and it developed the Zen microarchitecture, a clean-sheet, from-scratch redesign of the x86 architecture.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] The result? Epyc server processors now account for somewhere between 10% market share, as per Mercury Research, and 16%, as per Omdia. The AMD Ryzen desktop processor is the CPU of choice for gamers. And in Q3 of 2021, AMD reported sales of $4 billion, more in one quarter than AMD did in all of fiscal 2015 ($3.9 billion).To read this article in full, please click here

AMD: The Phoenix of tech

Five years ago, AMD was hanging on by a thread. Sales had dropped below $1 billion per quarter. Its client and server CPUs were no longer competitive with Intel’s. Its Opteron server-CPU market share was less than one percent. Its GPU products were a little better but Nvidia had the mindshare.Then two things happened: Dr. Lisa Su ascended to the CEO position, and it developed the Zen microarchitecture, a clean-sheet, from-scratch redesign of the x86 architecture.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] The result? Epyc server processors now account for somewhere between 10% market share, as per Mercury Research, and 16%, as per Omdia. The AMD Ryzen desktop processor is the CPU of choice for gamers. And in Q3 of 2021, AMD reported sales of $4 billion, more in one quarter than AMD did in all of fiscal 2015 ($3.9 billion).To read this article in full, please click here

AMD: The phoenix of tech

Five years ago, AMD was hanging on by a thread. Sales had dropped below $1 billion per quarter. Its client and server CPUs were no longer competitive with Intel’s. Its Opteron server-CPU market share was less than one percent. Its GPU products were a little better but Nvidia had the mindshare.Then two things happened: Dr. Lisa Su ascended to the CEO position, and it developed the Zen microarchitecture, a clean-sheet, from-scratch redesign of the x86 architecture.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] The result? Epyc server processors now account for somewhere between 10% market share, as per Mercury Research, and 16%, as per Omdia. The AMD Ryzen desktop processor is the CPU of choice for gamers. And in Q3 of 2021, AMD reported sales of $4 billion, more in one quarter than AMD did in all of fiscal 2015 ($3.9 billion).To read this article in full, please click here

AMD: The phoenix of tech

Five years ago, AMD was hanging on by a thread. Sales had dropped below $1 billion per quarter. Its client and server CPUs were no longer competitive with Intel’s. Its Opteron server-CPU market share was less than one percent. Its GPU products were a little better but Nvidia had the mindshare.Then two things happened: Dr. Lisa Su ascended to the CEO position, and it developed the Zen microarchitecture, a clean-sheet, from-scratch redesign of the x86 architecture.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] The result? Epyc server processors now account for somewhere between 10% market share, as per Mercury Research, and 16%, as per Omdia. The AMD Ryzen desktop processor is the CPU of choice for gamers. And in Q3 of 2021, AMD reported sales of $4 billion, more in one quarter than AMD did in all of fiscal 2015 ($3.9 billion).To read this article in full, please click here

FTC investigation of Nvidia/Arm deal will only hurt Arm

The proposed Nvidia-Arm merger had another roadblock thrown in front of it when the US Federal Trade Commission’s filed a lawsuit objecting to the $40 billion deal last week.The acquisition met with almost immediate opposition from UK entities when it was announced in September 2020. Now, 15 months laster the FTC weighs in and has set an administrative trial for Aug. 9, 2022.“Tomorrow’s technologies depend on preserving today’s competitive, cutting-edge chip markets,” said Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition in a statement. “This proposed deal would distort Arm’s incentives in chip markets and allow the combined firm to unfairly undermine Nvidia’s rivals.”To read this article in full, please click here

FTC investigation of Nvidia/Arm deal will only hurt Arm

The proposed Nvidia-Arm merger had another roadblock thrown in front of it when the US Federal Trade Commission’s filed a lawsuit objecting to the $40 billion deal last week.The acquisition met with almost immediate opposition from UK entities when it was announced in September 2020. Now, 15 months laster the FTC weighs in and has set an administrative trial for Aug. 9, 2022.“Tomorrow’s technologies depend on preserving today’s competitive, cutting-edge chip markets,” said Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition in a statement. “This proposed deal would distort Arm’s incentives in chip markets and allow the combined firm to unfairly undermine Nvidia’s rivals.”To read this article in full, please click here

Amazon announces third generation of Graviton processors

At its annual re:Invent conference, Amazon Web Services announced the newest generation of its Arm-based Graviton processors, the Graviton 3, which the company claims will be 25% or more faster than the last-generation chips  in key workloads.The 25% is likely for integer workloads, because AWS also said the Graviton 3 boasts double the floating-point performances (FLOP), a three-fold performance improvement in machine-learning workloads, and better cryptographic performance. AWS also claims the new chips will use 60% less power.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] The chips will power new EC2 C7g instances in the AWS cloud. The chips and instances will be the first to use DDR5 memory, which delivers 50% higher bandwidth than DDR4 but with a much lower power draw.To read this article in full, please click here

Amazon announces third generation of Graviton processors

At its annual re:Invent conference, Amazon Web Services announced the newest generation of its Arm-based Graviton processors, the Graviton 3, which the company claims will be 25% or more faster than the last-generation chips  in key workloads.The 25% is likely for integer workloads, because AWS also said the Graviton 3 boasts double the floating-point performances (FLOP), a three-fold performance improvement in machine-learning workloads, and better cryptographic performance. AWS also claims the new chips will use 60% less power.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] The chips will power new EC2 C7g instances in the AWS cloud. The chips and instances will be the first to use DDR5 memory, which delivers 50% higher bandwidth than DDR4 but with a much lower power draw.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco hit with software and physical issues

Cisco Systems has been hit with an unusual double-whammy of issues, one of them in software and one in hardware.First, the more serious issue, a firewall flaw. Security researcher Positive Technologies, which hunts for security vulnerabilities, posted a warning that a vulnerability in Cisco firewall appliances could allow hackers to cause them to fail.The problem is in the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) firewalls. Forrester Research says there are more than a million of them deployed worldwide. Positive assessed the severity level of vulnerability as high and recommended users should install updates, which are available, as soon as possible.To read this article in full, please click here

Cisco hit with software and physical issues

Cisco Systems has been hit with an unusual double-whammy of issues, one of them in software and one in hardware.First, the more serious issue, a firewall flaw. Security researcher Positive Technologies, which hunts for security vulnerabilities, posted a warning that a vulnerability in Cisco firewall appliances could allow hackers to cause them to fail.The problem is in the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Cisco Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) firewalls. Forrester Research says there are more than a million of them deployed worldwide. Positive assessed the severity level of vulnerability as high and recommended users should install updates, which are available, as soon as possible.To read this article in full, please click here

Xilinx launches a data-center accelerator for HPC

Xilinx has introduced its latest data-center accelerator, the Alveo U55C, which it says is its most powerful accelerator yet thanks to a memory change.For the most part, the FPGA-powered Alveo U55C is similar to its predecessor, Alveo U280. But the U280 has 8GB of HBM2 memory and 16GB of DDR4 DRAM, while the U55C comes with 16GB of HBM2 memory, and no DDR4. HBM2 is considerably faster and more expensive than DDR4 memory.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] By going to all HBM2 and removing the DDR4, Xilinx is able to increase performance and considerably reduce power and size. The Alveo U55C card is a single-slot full height, half length (FHHL) form factor vs. the full height, full length, dual width form of the U280. It also has a much lower power draw, 150W vs. 215W.To read this article in full, please click here

Xilinx launches a data-center accelerator for HPC

Xilinx has introduced its latest data-center accelerator, the Alveo U55C, which it says is its most powerful accelerator yet thanks to a memory change.For the most part, the FPGA-powered Alveo U55C is similar to its predecessor, Alveo U280. But the U280 has 8GB of HBM2 memory and 16GB of DDR4 DRAM, while the U55C comes with 16GB of HBM2 memory, and no DDR4. HBM2 is considerably faster and more expensive than DDR4 memory.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] By going to all HBM2 and removing the DDR4, Xilinx is able to increase performance and considerably reduce power and size. The Alveo U55C card is a single-slot full height, half length (FHHL) form factor vs. the full height, full length, dual width form of the U280. It also has a much lower power draw, 150W vs. 215W.To read this article in full, please click here

Nvidia announces new InfiniBand networking hardware

Networking equipment was the news of the day at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC), with new hardware for improved end-to-end performance.Nvidia announced the Quantum-2 platform, a 400Gbps InfiniBand networking platform consisting of the Quantum-2 switch, ConnectX-7 network adapter, BlueField-3 data processing unit (DPU), and all the software to support the new architecture.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] At 400Gbps, NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand doubles the network speed and triples the number of network ports over the Quantum-1 product. With a three-fold performance increase in performance, data-center fabric switches can be reduced by six-fold, cutting data center power consumption and reducing the overall data center space by 7%, the company says.To read this article in full, please click here

Nvidia announces new InfiniBand networking hardware

Networking equipment was the news of the day at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC), with new hardware for improved end-to-end performance.Nvidia announced the Quantum-2 platform, a 400Gbps InfiniBand networking platform consisting of the Quantum-2 switch, ConnectX-7 network adapter, BlueField-3 data processing unit (DPU), and all the software to support the new architecture.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] At 400Gbps, NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand doubles the network speed and triples the number of network ports over the Quantum-1 product. With a three-fold performance increase in performance, data-center fabric switches can be reduced by six-fold, cutting data center power consumption and reducing the overall data center space by 7%, the company says.To read this article in full, please click here

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