Intel is set to spin off its Programmable Solutions Group as an independent business, aiming for an IPO in 2-3 years. PSG, led by Intel's current Data Center and AI Group EVP Sandra Rivera, will operate independently as part of Intel's broader restructuring efforts. Despite PSG's past financial success, Intel believes this shift will enable more agility and growth, targeting markets beyond data centers. The goal is to retain majority ownership while allowing PSG to operate autonomously in the co...
Oct 04, 2023•32 min
Well, it finally happened folks, and I guess the third time is the charm. If rumors are to be believed, Cisco had approached Splunk on two separate occasion to talk about acquisition, but their offers were rebuffed for unknown reasons. This time it appears that all the planets and comets have aligned and Splunk has entered into a definitive agreement with Cisco to be acquired for $28B. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Cold Open 0:45 - Welcome to the Rundown 1:44 - Palo Alto in Advanced Talks to buy Talon and...
Sep 27, 2023•30 min
Microsoft's AI division just found out they made a mistake. Three years ago they accidentally leaked 38 terabytes of data to a public GitHub repo while contributing to AI learnign models. A security research team found the exposure recently, which came from a misconfigured Azure Blob storage URL that was overly permissive and difficult to manage. This Shared Access Signature, or SAS, token is designed to give teams full control over shared files. However, the difficulty in managing it makes it a...
Sep 20, 2023•30 min
In an excellent article, Karim Khan of the International Criminal Court has started to make the case that cybercriminals should be subject to international law for their escapades. The current state of the world often sees these criminals go unpunished due to nation state backing or lack of jurisdiction. Khan says that we need to get tougher by ensuring these naer-do-wells can face justice for their crimes, especially when they impact so many people around the world. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome ...
Sep 13, 2023•32 min
Dell Technologies and AMD are at the forefront of high-performance computing (HPC), driving innovation in various fields, such as space exploration, wildfire prevention, and neuroscience research. Their HPC solutions are in high demand, revolutionizing industries by accelerating productivity, enabling faster market entry, and offering energy-efficient infrastructure modernization. Dell's PowerEdge servers, equipped with the latest AMD 4th Gen EPYC™ processors, provide accessible and easy-to-depl...
Sep 06, 2023•29 min
At Hot Chips 2023, Intel unveiled Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids Xeon processors targeting data centers. Sierra Forest is Intel's first E-core Xeon with 144 CPU cores, while Granite Rapids focuses on core performance. Arm introduced Neoverse Compute Subsystem, aiding Neoverse N2 core integration. AMD previewed Siena Epyc processors for edge computing with up to 64 cores, notable power efficiency, and a compact form, catering to the edge computing market's demands. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome t...
Aug 30, 2023•44 min
VMware just can't stop talking about GenAI, which incorporates many different developments. The company is adding AI assistants to many products and is also introducing a new VMware Private AI offering with enabling generative AI processing on NVIDIA or open-source platforms for enterprise deployment. VMware is talking about security and data privacy while at the same time touting the performance and price benefits of on-premises GPUs. What is this all about? VMware NSX is even more exciting now...
Aug 23, 2023•44 min
Do you love licensing drama? Last week HashiCorp made headlines with an announcement by CTO Armon Dadgar that they're changing licensing models. HashiCorp is now adopting the Business Source License, or BSL, which was popularized by MariaDB and Couchbase. Under the BSL, HashiCorp code will remain freely available and usable for non-production use. You may be granted a license for production use if your project doesn't compete with HashiCorp. If it does you'll need to buy a commercial license. Th...
Aug 16, 2023•42 min
We are at the annual Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara this week, with the event showcasing the latest advancements in the storage industry. Let's take a closer look at some of the announcements, including bigger and better SSDs, taller NAND, and a whole lot of talk about CXL. We'll also look at the moves SNIA is doing to help the storage industry branch out into data and management while also providing continuity with the past. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome to the Rundown 1:26 - Cadence Buys Ram...
Aug 09, 2023•39 min
Some of the biggest names in the HPC and hyperconvergence space are banding together to standardize Ethernet. The new Ultra Ethernet Consortium counts AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, HPE, Intel, and others as founding members. Chairman J. Metz says the goal of the consortium is to tune Ethernet for workloads with specific performance requirements. The companies invovled are selling very high speed Ethernet focused on HPC and AI workloads. Notably absent in the list is NVIDIA. Live events are back, baby! I...
Aug 02, 2023•46 min
Cybersecurity remains a critical concern, dominating headlines with its persistent threats and sophisticated attacks. Recent incidents, such as the stolen Microsoft keys and the ongoing MOVEit file transfer hack, exemplify the complexity and severity of security breaches. However, amidst the intricacies of cybersecurity, seemingly minor errors can also lead to significant consequences, as demonstrated by the inadvertent sending of sensitive military emails to the wrong destination due to a simpl...
Jul 26, 2023•32 min
Nvidia accelerates its venture capital investments in cloud and AI software startups, taking an equity stake in Lambda Labs, a competitor to Amazon Web Services. The deal, worth potentially $300 million, signifies Nvidia's growing interest in supporting startups in the cloud and AI software market while maintaining its leadership in data center chips for AI applications. Does this move suggest that we're entering a new world of hyperscale competition? Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome to the Rundown 0...
Jul 19, 2023•28 min
The Linux world is abuzz with controversy as IBM Red Hat puts the source code for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) behind a paywall, leaving CentOS Stream as the only accessible option. Meanwhile, Oracle emphasizes its commitment to Linux freedom, offering open access to binaries and source code for their RHEL-compatible distribution, Oracle Linux. On the other hand, SUSE takes a bold step by forking RHEL and investing millions in developing their own RHEL-compatible distribution, free from restr...
Jul 12, 2023•43 min
Now that half of 2023 is behind us, let's take a closer look a the state of the global economy, with a special focus on the enterprise IT industry. As we've discussed, many different factors are impacting the current slowdown in sales of enterprise and cloud tech: Over-buying and hiring coming out of the pandemic, repercussions from the supply chain shortages, the war in Ukraine, tensions between the US, Europe, and China, a global cybercrime wave, and shifting demand from datacenter to cloud. L...
Jul 05, 2023•39 min
Training 3.0 benchmark results show performance gains of up to 1.54x compared to six months ago and 33-49x improvement over the first round, driving innovation and energy efficiency in the industry. Intel's Habana Gaudi2 ML training engine competes with Nvidia's offerings, boasting better performance than A100 and lower pricing than H100. Nvidia, on the other hand, unveils their NeMo model with half a trillion parameters and expands the MLPerf Training suite to include GPT-3 and a new Recommenda...
Jun 28, 2023•34 min
Intel is looking to expand their chip making facilities outside of the US. The first story this week involves a huge $25 billion dollar investment in chipmaking in Israel. Intel will pay increased taxes on the factory in return for an even bigger grant on the total investment should the conditions be met upon completion. The Israeli factory is expected to open in 2027 and operate through at least 2035. The second big investment comes in Germany, where the government has agreed to provide over $1...
Jun 21, 2023•33 min
We're at Pure Storage's Pure Accelerate conference this week, and the buzz is focused on the company's continuing quest to push hard disk drives out of the datacenter. The new FlashArray R4 products are faster, while the new "E family" of FlashBlade and FlashArray target capacity-focused applications like data protection and logging. Another announcement focuses on ransomware recovery, with Pure offering a temporary replacement array on demand. Let's talk about these stories in more detail. This...
Jun 14, 2023•35 min
At Cisco Live 2023, Cisco unveiled a range of solutions for SSE, network management, observability, and a new cloud-native application security solution called Panoptica. The event, which includes a performance by comedian Jim Gaffigan, highlighted Cisco's focus on simplifying user experiences and addressing the evolving needs of organizations. The security service edge (SSE) solution aims to streamline access and enhance hybrid work experiences, while the integration of generative AI into the S...
Jun 07, 2023•33 min
Dell Tech World was the talk of the industry last week. In part it's because Dell is rolling out initiatvies to try and address their key areas as those technologies move closer to the cloud. Dell APEX storage for public cloud was a key piece. APEX is a software defined storage platform for AWS and Azure that integrates with existing tools to create a hybrid multicloud experience. Also of note was Dell NativeEdge, a software platform that can help manage deployment of applications and devices at...
May 31, 2023•31 min
Ransomware attacks continue to pose a significant threat across various sectors, with recent incidents targeting critical industries and causing substantial financial and operational damages. Federal authorities have issued warnings about a surge in cyberattacks exploiting a high-severity vulnerability in Veeam software that enables unauthorized access and raises the risk of data heft and ransomware deployment. With healthcare organizations heavily reliant on Veeam software for data protection, ...
May 24, 2023•39 min
Controversy over AI, from ChatGPT to Bard, have been all over the news, and the impact of Large Language Models is hitting enterprise IT. We're seeing litigation against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI just as the US Congress heard testimony by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. And of course IT pros everywhere are grappling with the various ways their jobs will be affected by AI. Let's take a closer look at AI in the enterprise. This and more on this week's Rundown. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome to the Rundown...
May 17, 2023•30 min
Aruba Atmosphere was the talk of the town and we're here to cover the exciting announcements from the event. There was a lot of discussion about the integration of Aruba, now known as HPE Aruba Networking, into the wider HPE company portfolio. The wireless fans had lots to cheer about with a new update to Aruba Central that offers better visibility as well as integration with HPE GreenLake. Security experts loved seeing how the acquisition of Axis Security is providing new edge security capabili...
May 10, 2023•34 min
Thanks to Gina Rosenthal for sharing a wonderful article from Wired about the details behind the SolarWinds Orion supply chain hack that we covered back at the end of 2020. You may recall that SolarWinds was compromised by Russian hackers and their software was infected and used to breach the US government as well as Microsoft, Mandiant, and more. In this article we're learning even more interesting information, such as the source of the attacks from the Russian SVR which is their version of the...
May 03, 2023•28 min
In the three years since reporting financial metrics Google's cloud business has announced they have turned a profit. Their offerings under this umbrella include Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace. These two products now account for 10 percent of parent company Alphabet's total revenue. Buried in an SEC filing is news that Google will extend the estimated useful life of its servers and networking equipment to 6 years. While this is phrased as financial engineering, it also reflects a cha...
Apr 26, 2023•31 min
Intel made a couple of big moves this week. The first was the surprise news that they are exiting the server market. No, they aren't giving up on Xeons and they are going to get Sapphire Rapids out the door. Instead, they are selling off their server integration business. The recipient of this windfall is MiTAC, an edge-to-cloud solutions provider and ODM partner of DSG. Intel is giving MiTAC the rights to manufacture existing designs. In addition, they announced the end of their Blockscale ASIC...
Apr 19, 2023•36 min
China is reportedly blocking multiple mergers and is now investigating Micron for an unspecified cybersecurity concern. Delays include Intel’s acquisition of Tower Semiconductor, Maxlinear’s purchase of Silicon Motion, Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, and Microsoft’s bid for Activision Blizzard, as well as the long-delay in Cisco’s acquisition of Acacia and the called-off purchase of NXP by Qualcomm which we reported on previously. The latest move against Micron seems designed to antagonize rat...
Apr 12, 2023•23 min
If you're ready to start building out IoT networks and you want access to the largest one around Amazon is ready for you. Amazon Sidewalk is now open for developers to start testing. Sidewalk is Amazon's IoT-focused solution for edge devices that utilizes both Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and 900 MHz wireless networks to provide coverage. Sidewalk is generated from Amazon's Ring cameras and Echo speakers and has 90% coverage across the US according to reports. Tom, what's Amazon hoping to accompli...
Apr 05, 2023•32 min
Computing pioneer and Intel co-founder Gordon Moore has died. His name is commonly used in reference to Moore's Law, which stated that processors would be exponentially more complex, but he was much more than this. Moore was a visionary, who guided Intel through the DRAM market in the early years and then lead the transition of the company to lay the foundation for modern microcomputers. He quiet and polite, unlike Robert Noyce and Andy Grove, but everyone trusted Moore's thoughtful and consider...
Mar 29, 2023•39 min
Nvidia GTC is happening this week and there's lots of new hardware coming out. From the H100 card optimized for large language models to screaming fast GPUs for laptops and workstations Nvidia has something for everyone. We've already referenced the announcements around Bluefield 3 but Nvidia has also announced a new supercompute cluster with DGX cloud that you can totally rent for $37,000 a month. 0:00 | Welcome to the Rundown 0:42 | SSE Revenues Growing per Dell'Oro 4:09 | Nutanix CIO Out Amid...
Mar 22, 2023•31 min
Unless you've been living under a rock, you heard about the failure of Silicon Valley Bank last weekend. But what does this mean for enterprise IT? The FDIC is covering all depositors, even beyond the traditional $250,000 limit, but are they able to access their money? And what ripple effects will this failure have on ventur capital, startups, the enterprise IT ecosystem, and most importantly tech workers? Time Stamps: 0:00 | Welcome to the Rundown 0:37 | CelerData Launches StarRocks Version 3 3...
Mar 15, 2023•32 min
