Intel today launched the third generation of its Xeon Scalable server-processor line with more than three dozen new chips built on its long-overdue 10-nanometer manufacturing process and featuring a host of specialized features for security and AI.The new chips were developed under the codename Ice Lake and were long in coming, due to the delays Intel had getting its manufacturing process down to 10nm. AMD, through its TSMC manufacturing partner, is at 7nm and its Epyc processors are slowly but increasingly taking market share from Intel.Now see "How to manage your power bill while adopting AI"
Intel says the Ice Lake series has a 20% improvement in the number of instructions that can be carried out per clock cycle over the prior generation, thanks to the smaller process node letting them cram more transistors into the package.To read this article in full, please click here
Ever since Bitcoin was introduced back in 2009, this cryptocurrency has had the distinction of being something you could mine with your computer—putting your hardware to use helping the blockchain technology Bitcoin is based on record and verify transactions by solving complex math problems.As a reward, you’d get Bitcoins. But it was a very slow process for a single PC, and the necessary component for success was a high-end GPU. One GPU brought to bear on Bitcoin could take years to find one coin, so miners started building massive farms akin to data centers but without enclosures. The result was that Bitcoin farms bought up all the GPUs, causing severe shortages and infuriating gamers.To read this article in full, please click here
Arm Holdings has introduced the Armv9 microarchitecture, the first overhaul of its CPU architecture in a decade, with heavy emphasis on security and all things artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).Arm, for the unfamiliar, does not make CPUs like Intel and AMD. It makes basic architectural designs that licensees modify with their own special technological sauce. It makes variances for high-performance, mobile, embedded, and edge/cloud.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
As part of Arm’s Vision Day event earlier this week, the company announced the first details of the Armv9 architecture, with more to come later this year. The company has to tread cautiously as it is in the process of being acquired by Nvidia, and forces are lining up to oppose the deal.To read this article in full, please click here
In this Linux tip, learn how to use the nmap command. It's generally used for security auditing, but provides interesting and useful information on systems connecting too your local network.
Quantum computers can learn to reason, even when burdened with uncertainty and incomplete data, concludes a team of scientists from U.K.-based quantum software developer Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC).This ability is similar to intuitive human reasoning, which allows people to draw conclusions and make decisions despite a lack of comprehensive information. CQC’s research confirms a belief among many scientists that quantum computers have a natural propensity for reasoning.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
In a paper published on the open-access scholarly archive arXiv, CQC scientists detail how they developed methods that demonstrated how quantum machines can learn to infer hidden information from general probabilistic reasoning models. If replicable, these methods could improve a broad range of applications for quantum computing, including medical diagnoses, fault-detection in mission-critical machines, and financial forecasting for investment management.To read this article in full, please click here
IDC has released a new study, the first of its kind, that predicts that cloud computing could help to prevent more than one billion metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the next three years.The forecast uses IDC data on server distribution and cloud and on-premises software use along with third-party information on data center power usage, carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt-hour, and emission comparisons of cloud and non-cloud data centers.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
IDC's forecast includes upper and lower bounds for the estimated reduction in emissions. If the percentage of green cloud data centers today stays where it is, just the migration to cloud itself could save 693 million metric tons over the four-year time period.To read this article in full, please click here
Networks of the not-to-distant future could feature many more open-source software components, advanced programmability, and be delivered as-a-service, according to experts speaking at the Future:Net 2021 symposium.Attendees of the virtual event heard predictions from vendors such as Cisco, Google, and Microsoft as well as academics and analyst firms such as Gartner and 451 Research. Who's selling SASE, and what do you get?
A key theme from many of the speakers was that networks and networking technology of the future will feature way more software controls and programmability than most enterprise customers see in their environments today. To read this article in full, please click here
One of the really nice things about working on the Linux command line is that you can get a lot of work done very quickly. With a handle on the most useful commands and some command-line savvy, you can take a lot of the tedium out of your daily work. This post will walk you through several handy tricks that can make your work load feel a little lighter and maybe be a little bit more enjoyable.Emptying files with >
Any time you have an important file that you need to empty because it's become too large or the data is no longer needed, you can do that by using the command > filename. This is much faster than removing the file and recreating it with the original permissions. The > sign followed by the file name works the same as typing cat /dev/null > filename, but is wonderfully quick. It empties the file, but leaves permissions and ownership intact.To read this article in full, please click here
As IT professionals know, enterprise server farms are huge energy consumers, and the larger they are, the more voracious their appetite.Quantum computing could help because it is not only supposed to solve complex problems exponentially faster than classical computing, it’s also supposed to do so while consuming less energy. However major barriers—such as creating the extremely low temperatures required to enable superconductivity that is used in quantum-computing components—stand in the way.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
Now researchers at MIT are working on a tiny device that could help enable quantum computing and drastically reduce server-farm costs. The roots of this device—made from a superconducting nanowire—stretch back to a similar concept developed in the mid-1950s by an MIT electrical engineer who died tragically young before his vision could become reality.To read this article in full, please click here
If you’d like to know what systems and devices are attached to your local network—whether out of security concerns or simple curiosity, Linux has some really great commands for providing answers. In this post, we’ll probe a small network and see how devices can be identified.nmap
The first tool we’ll use is nmap, which stands for Network Mapper, an open source tool for exploring networks and doing some serious security auditing. It was designed to work quickly even on large networks and provide information using raw packets to identify hosts, services, and sometimes even operating systems.The simple scan shown below is detecting systems and devices on the local network. The “/24” portion of the target address indicates that all hosts in the 192.168.0.x IP address range are to be included.To read this article in full, please click here
If you’d like to know what systems and devices are attached to your local network—whether out of security concerns or simple curiosity, Linux has some really great commands for providing answers. In this post, we’ll probe a small network and see how devices can be identified.nmap
The first tool we’ll use is nmap, which stands for Network Mapper, an open source tool for exploring networks and doing some serious security auditing. It was designed to work quickly even on large networks and provide information using raw packets to identify hosts, services, and sometimes even operating systems.The simple scan shown below is detecting systems and devices on the local network. The “/24” portion of the target address indicates that all hosts in the 192.168.0.x IP address range are to be included.To read this article in full, please click here
AMD has taken the wraps off the third generation of Epyc server processors, codenamed Milan, just 18 months after launching the Rome generation. Formally named Epyc 7003, the new generation sports a new Zen 3 core with a number of performance bumps.The Zen 3 core has been on the market for a while in desktop form as AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series, a line that has proven very hard to find due to a supply shortage and high demand. Because of its performance, the 5000 series is insanely popular with gamers.Cisco uses new AMD Milan processor to grow its UCS server family
Like the Zen 2/Rome/Epyc 7002 line, the new Milan is built on a 7nm manufacturing process and is socket-compatible with the prior two generations of servers, so you can give your servers a processor upgrade without having to replace the whole thing. All you need is a BIOS upgrade from the motherboard maker.To read this article in full, please click here
The /etc/fstab file is a very important file on Linux systems. It contains information that allows the system to connect to disk partitions and determine where they should be mounted in the file system. While this file has played an important role over the years, its format has changed with the introduction of UUIDs and, on some systems, a more reliable file-system type.Here's an example of an /etc/fstab file on a Fedora system:$ cat /etc/fstab
#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Fri Mar 12 12:26:55 2021
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk/'.
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info.
#
# After editing this file, run 'systemctl daemon-reload' to update systemd
# units generated from this file.
#
UUID=a9e33237-9114-44ae-afd5-8ddb231d301f / btrfs subvol=root 0 0
UUID=15f42905-5897-4804-9c51-e6d5e169e6c2 /boot ext4 defaults 1 2
#UUID=a9e33237-9114-44ae-afd5-8ddb231d301f /home btrfs subvol=home 0 0
UUID=d867ced1-8d81-47c6-b299-3365ba8a02de /home ext4 defaults
How to loop forever in bash on Linux
Each line in the file (other than the comments) represents a file system and has six fields.To read this article in full, please click here
NetApp, one of many players in the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) hardware business, plans to end production of its NetApp HCI hardware and focus instead on its Project Astra Kubernetes platform.HCI is split into two categories, software and hardware. On the software side, it's roughly an even split in marketshare between Nutanix and VMware. On the hardware side, IDC and Gartner both list HCI leaders as HP Enterprise, Dell Technology, Cisco Systems, and "the rest of the market." You can guess what category NetApp falls into.
Read more:To read this article in full, please click here
The best way to avoid paying ransom to attackers who have infected your systems with ransomware is to have those systems adequately backed up so you can wipe them and restore them from safe backups. Here are several options for making sure those backups are up to the task.In this article, backup refers to any system that you're going to use to respond to a ransomware attack, including old-school backup systems, replication systems, and modern hybrid systems that support backup and disaster recover. For simplicity’s sake, they’ll all be referred to as backup here.
More about backup and recovery:To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco has bulked-up its rack server offering with new models that promise to deliver low latency and high-speed computing needed for hybrid-cloud and financial workloads.The new servers are part of Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) family and are built with AMD’s new EPYC 7003 processors, which feature up to 64 Zen 3 cores per processor and a variety of performance and security features.Still not dead: The mainframe hangs on sustained by Linux and hybrid cloud
Cisco and AMD have worked together on server offerings since 2018 when Cisco first partnered with AMD to better contend with competitors such as Dell and HP. To read this article in full, please click here
VMware and Nvidia have expanded their alliance to support Nvidia GPU-based applications on VMware's new vSphere 7 Update 2. The upgraded version of vSphere 7 will support the new Nvidia AI Enterprise offering, a suite of enterprise-grade AI tools and frameworks that enables GPU-accelerated applications to run in VMware virtual machines and containers.VMware's vSphere 7 U2 adds support for Nvidia's A100 Tensor Core GPU and its multi-instance GPU feature, which allows for partitioning of the cores on an A100 for use by multiple users, much in the same way VMware partitions CPU cores out to multiple users.
Read more: Highflying Nvidia widens its reach into enterprise data centers To read this article in full, please click here
Soon after data centers began transitioning from hard drives to solid-state drives (SSD), the NVMe protocol arrived to support high-performance, direct-attached PCIe SSDs. NVMe was followed by NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF), which was designed to efficiently support hyperscale remote SSD pools, effectively replacing direct-attached storage (DAS) to become the default protocol for disaggregated storage within a cloud infrastructure.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco continues to crank up the speed of its webscaler-class Silicon One devices, this week adding three new devices—including 25.6Tbps switching silicon it says delivers 1.7 times higher bandwidth and three times higher packets-per-second than other silicon on the market.Cisco unveiled the Silicon One family of unified switches and routers in 2019 as part of what it called its “Internet for the Future” strategy. The Silicon One family is important as Cisco has designs on being a leading provider of the network underpinnings of large webscale and service provider networks. The family can also help Cisco compete effectively with others such as Intel, Broadcom, Juniper, Arista.To read this article in full, please click here