Enterprises that want to kick the tires on the open-source network operating system SONiC got a new option this week as Aviz Networks and a group of well-established industry vendors and organizations said they would collaborate on a new testing facility.The lab, the Open Networking Experience (ONE) Center for SONiC is being offered by SONiC startup Aviz and will be supported by collaboration with the Linux Foundation, The Open Compute Project, Celestica, Cisco, Edgecore, Nvidia, Ragile, Supermicro, Wistron, and Keysight.The center will feature online and in-person access at no cost for network operators to try out the capabilities of SONiC across a wide range of hardware, according to Aviz. To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco’s Talos security intelligence group issued a warning today about an uptick in highly sophisticated attacks on network infrastructure including routers and firewalls.The Cisco warning piggybacks a similar joint warning issued today from The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the US National Security Agency (NSA), US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that noted an uptick in threats in part utilizing an exploit that first came to light in 2017. That exploit targeted an SNMP vulnerability in Cisco routers that the vendor patched in 2017. To read this article in full, please click here
When it comes to helping enterprises reap the potential benefits of AI, IBM has honed a well-learned, practical approach that differs from that used by many of its competitors.“Our pragmatism is one of our important differentiators, too, because we know—through years of implementing and adapting AI capabilities for thousands of clients—that the journey to using the technology effectively is as important as the ultimate end-goal, especially for the mission-critical enterprises we work with,” said Tarun Chopra, vice president of IBM product management, Data and AI. That journey can include myriad issues such as determining the best use of the massive amounts of data available to large enterprises, perhaps integrating that data with cloud-based applications, and effectively applying the right AI models to get the best results.To read this article in full, please click here
The netstat command provides a tremendous amount on information on network activity. With the -s option (netstat -s), it will display summaries for various protocols such as packets received, active connections, failed connections and a lot more. While the data is extensive enough to make you dizzy, the more you get used to what the command's output looks like, the more you'll become familiar with what to expect and maybe even get better at spotting what's unusual. In this post, we're going to look at various portions of the netstat -s command's output using crafted aliases to make it easier.To read this article in full, please click here
Intel had a busy week. A trio of news announcements revealed its chiplets progress, a manufacturing agreement with Arm, and the shedding of another non-core line of business.Prototype multi-die chips heading to DoD
The biggest news is that Intel has begun to ship prototype multi-die chips to the U.S. Department of Defense more than a year ahead of schedule. The DoD project known as State-of-the-Art Heterogeneous Integrated Packaging (SHIP) is an ambitious plan that will connect Intel’s CPUs, FPGAs, ASICs and government-developed chiplets all within the same processor packaging, as opposed to multiple separate dies.AMD was the first to pursue the chiplet design, but AMD took a different approach in that it broke up large, monolithic CPUs into smaller chips. So, instead of one physical piece of silicon with 32 cores, it created four chiplets with eight cores each connected by high-speed interconnects. The idea is that it’s much easier to manufacture an eight-core chip than a 32-core chip.To read this article in full, please click here
AI and machine learning systems are working with data sets in the billions of entries, which means speeds and feeds are more important than ever. Two new announcements reinforce that point with a goal to speed data movement for AI.For starters, Nvidia just published new performance numbers for its H100 compute Hopper GPU in MLPerf 3.0, a prominent benchmark for deep learning workloads. Naturally, Hopper surpassed its predecessor, the A100 Ampere product, in time-to-train measurements, and it’s also seeing improved performance thanks to software optimizations.MLPerf runs thousands of models and workloads designed to simulate real world use. These workloads include image classification (ResNet 50 v1.5), natural language processing (BERT Large), speech recognition (RNN-T), medical imaging (3D U-Net), object detection (RetinaNet), and recommendation (DLRM).To read this article in full, please click here
The European Commission has informed Broadcom of its objections to the company’s proposed $61 billion acquisition of VMware — the latest hurdle the company needs to clear after regulatory agencies in the UK and US also raised concerns. “Broadcom is the leading supplier of Fiber Channel host bus adapters (FC HBAs) and storage adapters. The markets are very concentrated. If the competitors of Broadcom are hampered in their ability to compete in these markets, this could in turn lead to higher prices, lower quality and less innovation for business customers, and ultimately consumers,” the Commission said in a statement.To read this article in full, please click here
The upcoming cloud system will provide an added layer of network and data handling security for companies working on national security and defense projects and collaborating through the Webex app.
Edge server maker Stratus Technologies today announced that the 12th generation of its ftServer line is now on sale, bringing new hardware upgrades, improved resiliency for mission-critical workloads and, in time, support for a broader range of operating systems.The latest ftServers come in four main configurations. The 6920 platform, designed for rigorous data- and transaction-intensive work in large data centers or similar, is the largest, while the 6910 is designed to fit into smaller facilities. The 4920 and 2920, respectively, scale back size and capability to fit into medium-size facilities and remote offices, and running individual applications on shop floors or in industrial plants.To read this article in full, please click here
Failed hard disk drives ran for an average of 25,233 hours before their demise, which translates to a lifespan of two years and 10 months.That’s according to Secure Data Recovery, which has a specific perspective on the matter. It specializes in salvaging data from failed hard drives, so pretty much every hard drive that it sees isn’t working properly, which gives it the opportunity to spot some patterns in hard drive longevity. (Secure Data Recovery’s analysis is different from the quarterly hard-drive report from cloud storage vendor Backblaze, which focuses on the few hard drives that fail out of the hundreds of thousands that it uses.)To read this article in full, please click here
Data backup and management company Cohesity today announced plans to offer an Azure OpenAI-backed chatbot as both a security analysis tool and line-of-business assistant, along with tighter integration with Active Directory, Sentinel and Purview, as part of an expanded partnership with Microsoft.To read this article in full, please click here
The ncdu command provides a fast and very easy-to-use way to see how you are using disk space on your Linux system. It allows you to navigate through your directories and files and review what file content is using up the most disk space. If you’ve never used this command, you’ll likely have to install it before you can take advantage of the insights it can provide with a command like one of these:$ sudo dnf install ncdu
$ sudo apt install ncdu
The name “ncdu” stands for “NCurses disk usage. .It uses an ncurses interface to provide the disk usage information. “Curses”, as you probably know, has no connection to foul language. Instead, when related to Linux, “curses” is a term related to “cursor” – that little marker on your screen that indicates where you are currently working. Ncurses is a terminal control library that lends itself to constructing text user interfaces.To read this article in full, please click here
The transition from software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) to secure access service edge (SASE) is proving to be difficult for many enterprises, according to new research from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).If you’re a network or security professional, you’re probably familiar with SASE, a new class of solutions that integrates SD-WAN, secure remote access, and cloud-delivered, multi-function network security. Many enterprises are now evolving their SD-WAN implementations into a SASE solution, either by adopting their SD-WAN providers’ SASE capabilities or integrating their SD-WAN with third-party, cloud-based network security solutions.To read this article in full, please click here
Use of video streaming encoder cards in the data center is on the rise, and AMD is the latest to tackle the demands of high-volume streaming.Even before the pandemic forced everyone to work from home, videoconferencing usage was climbing. Once schools and businesses became dependent on Zoom calls, video streams started clogging data centers and network pipes across the country. Reliance on video among consumers also took off as TikTok, Twitch, and Facebook became broadcast platforms.With users demanding broadcast-quality video – no one wants blurry, blocky, poor resolution – enterprises are left to deal with increased strain on server CPUs.To read this article in full, please click here
TSMC experienced a sharp drop in chip sales over the last few months, and is seeking guidance from the US on CHIPS Act subsidies for its planned manufacturing facilities in Arizona.
OK, I’ve come around on the notion of private 5G.Last year, I blogged about private 5G and explained how you’d know you were a prospect for the technology as an alternative to WiFi or public cellular services. My focus was on the same community of workers that most tech empowerment has focused on, meaning the white-collar or “carpet” types. Since the first of the year, I’ve had a chance to chat with 31 companies who are using or deploying private wireless technology, and I’ve also chatted with some of their integrators and suppliers. None of the enterprises were using private 5G in the hallowed (carpeted) halls of an office. Instead, their targeted jobs were outside in the dirt—sometimes literally—or on some factory or warehouse floor.To read this article in full, please click here
If there’s one big lesson about internet availability, it might be coming from Ukraine, where more than a year of Russian attacks have failed to bring down the network.According to a study by ThousandEyes, which is part of Cisco, the repeated attempts to disrupt access to key Ukrainian web sites have occasionally succeeded, but only for short periods.The most effective defensive strategy proved to be hosting content on global providers’ infrastructure, which demonstrated the most resilience overall, according to ThousandEyes’ “Ukraine Internet Analysis – March 2023”.To read this article in full, please click here
Japan will increase the financial support it's giving to semiconductor maker Rapidus — established with the aim of making cutting-edge, 2-nanometer chips — in order to further support domestic production, according to Japanese trade and industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura.“The government is ready to continue and beef up financial support to the company,” Nishimura said in an interview with Bloomberg. He added that the plan will require the government to invest trillions of yen in the project.The Tokyo-based manufacturer was established in 2022 with the aim of making 2nm chips in Japan by 2025. To date, it has received ￥70 billion (US$532 million) from the Japanese government, in addition to investments from Toyota, Sony, and telecom giant NT&T.To read this article in full, please click here
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