Tearing Apart Google’s TPU 3.0 AI Coprocessor

Google did its best to impress this week at its annual IO conference. While Google rolled out a bunch of benchmarks that were run on its current Cloud TPU instances, based on TPUv2 chips, the company divulged a few skimpy details about its next generation TPU chip and its systems architecture. The company changed from version notation (TPUv2) to revision notation (TPU 3.0) with the update, but ironically the detail we have assembled shows that the step from TPUv2 to what we will call TPUv3 probably isn’t that big; it should probably be called TPU v2r5 or something like that. …

Tearing Apart Google’s TPU 3.0 AI Coprocessor was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

IDG Contributor Network: IPSec – A swiss army knife of kludges

When I started my journey in the technology sector back in the early 2000’s, the world of networking comprised of simple structures. I remember configuring several standard branch sites that would connect to a central headquarters. There was only a handful of remote warriors who were assigned, and usually just a few high-ranking officials.As the dependence on networking increased, so did the complexity of network designs. The standard single site became dual based with redundant connectivity to different providers, advanced failover techniques, and high availability designs became the norm. The number of remote workers increased and eventually, security holes began to open in my network design.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: IPSec – A swiss army knife of kludges

When I started my journey in the technology sector back in the early 2000’s, the world of networking comprised of simple structures. I remember configuring several standard branch sites that would connect to a central headquarters. There was only a handful of remote warriors who were assigned, and usually just a few high-ranking officials.As the dependence on networking increased, so did the complexity of network designs. The standard single site became dual based with redundant connectivity to different providers, advanced failover techniques, and high availability designs became the norm. The number of remote workers increased and eventually, security holes began to open in my network design.To read this article in full, please click here

What Qualcomm’s Exit From Arm Server Chips Means

Broadcom may not have wanted to be in the Arm server chip business any more, but its machinations since it was acquired by Avago Technology two years ago have certainly sent ripples through that nascent market. It did it in the wake of buying Broadcom, and now it looks like it is doing it again with Qualcomm.

Before it shelled out a stunning $37 billion to buy Broadcom, best known for its datacenter switch ASICs but also an Arm server chip wannabe at the time, Avago was a conglomerate that made chips for optical networking, server networking, and storage controllers …

What Qualcomm’s Exit From Arm Server Chips Means was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

On the ‘net: Is Networking a Commodity?

It seems, based on this, that all businesses care about, in terms of the network, is the ability to move packets. To use a comparison that is often made: It might be “nice” to drive a “nicer car,” but in the end, a car is a car is a car. All that matters in cars is that they get you from point A to point B, wherever those points might be. If all the data a business cares about can be packed up into packets, and all that matters is getting them from point A to point B—wherever those two places might be, then the kind of equipment you use to move packets does not matter. @ECI

Women in Africa Call for a Trusted and Inclusive Internet

Creating a safer and trusted Internet MUST involve education building and awareness raising. This is one message that came up at the women’s event during the 2018 Africa Internet Summit held in Dakar.

“Education should target mothers who do not always believe that they can have an important role in the Internet world and who are the ones educating the future generation of women in tech. Also, we should educate developers of applications used on the Internet to consciously include safety by design, as well as governments to enact cyber laws that protect their citizens,” one of the participants stated during her presentation. With this, they meant that not only individuals, but also companies and governments have an important role in building a safer and trusted Internet.

Raising awareness of Internet safety was another point raised by many of the participants. “In school, we are taught to use computers and the Internet, but we are not taught about how to use the Internet safely,” one participant stressed. The attendees called for educational systems to change. They also suggested addressing online privacy and safety concerns so girls can be aware from the very beginning.

Privacy of personal data was another important Continue reading

The First Nepal School on Internet Governance

In January 2018, the Internet Society Nepal Chapter organized the first Nepal School on Internet Governance (npSIG) in collaboration with the Forum for Digital Equality. The initiative offered an intensive two-day learning course covering a wide list of topics at the Institute of Engineering Pulchowk in Kathmandu. The initiative helped participants to identify global and regional issues and facilitate the understanding of several aspects of Internet Governance, including access, diversity, security, privacy, IoT, and human rights within the Nepalese policy framework. The schedule included theoretical sessions, roleplays, and attendee engagement activities. All brilliant speakers presentations are available on sig.org.np for further consultation.

One of the major objectives of npSIG was to raise awareness among young people about Internet Governance issues and to promote their participation in the discussion. The speakers inspired analysis, critical thinking and motivated the audience to design effective questions and take action.

How can we manage the Internet’s evolution in our country?

The opening speech delivered by Baburam Aryal, Chairperson at the Forum for Digital Equality, enhanced the understanding of the Internet Governance concept, which in Nepal is in the very early stages of development. The establishment of a proper ecosystem is complex as Continue reading

Nest Alert: Protection From Pwned* Passwords

A colleague just received an “Urgent Security Alert – Action Requested” email from Nest. At first glance it looked like either a phishing attempt or one of the way-too-often breach notifications we all receive these days. Instead, it was a real alert notifying him that the password he uses for his Nest account had been compromised in a data breach – not at Nest but somewhere else. Nest encouraged him to update to a unique password and enable two-step verification (additional authentication beyond a password, usually referred to as multi-factor authentication).

While it’s not clear exactly how Nest determined that the password was compromised, it could have come from security researcher Troy Hunt’s recently updated Pwned Passwords service (part of his “have i been pwned?” site). Via this service, you can enter a password to see if it matches more than half a billion passwords that have been compromised in data breaches. A hashed version of the full list of passwords can also be downloaded to do local or batch processing. (“Pwned” is video gamer talk for “utterly defeated,” as in “Last time we played, I pwned him.”)

Hunt created this service in response to the National Continue reading

Solar power costs half what coal costs

New solar installs are contributing the same amount of electricity as building one new coal-fueled power station annually in Australia, according to the head of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).“We are essentially seeing the [equivalent] of a new power plant being built every season,” AEMO chief Audrey Zibelman told the Sydney Morning Herald.One reason rooftop adoption in Australia is exploding, the paper wrote, is because of government subsidies. However, there’s another financial driver of alternative power globally, which is the full-lifecycle cost of building and operating — it’s now lower.To read this article in full, please click here

Solar power costs half what coal costs

New solar installs are contributing the same amount of electricity as building one new coal-fueled power station annually in Australia, according to the head of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).“We are essentially seeing the [equivalent] of a new power plant being built every season,” AEMO chief Audrey Zibelman told the Sydney Morning Herald.One reason rooftop adoption in Australia is exploding, the paper wrote, is because of government subsidies. However, there’s another financial driver of alternative power globally, which is the full-lifecycle cost of building and operating — it’s now lower.To read this article in full, please click here

Hitachi Pulls Itself Together In The Datacenter

Hitachi is a massive multi-national conglomerate that has more than 300,000 employees and 950 subsidiaries and a reach that extends into a wide array of industries, from aircraft and automotive systems to telecommunications, construction, defense and financial services. It also is among the world’s largest IT companies, nestled in there among the likes of Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Samsung. Hitachi’s sprawling technology capabilities ranges from compute and storage appliances in its well-known Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) unit to datacenter management software, data management and business intelligence, and the Internet of Things.

For the past several years, the company …

Hitachi Pulls Itself Together In The Datacenter was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

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