In a big win for the United States, the Department of Energy’s Frontier supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee was ranked No. 1 in the Top500 worldwide performance contest and the first to top the quintillion operations-per-second (exascale) benchmark in a LINPACK test. The Department of Energy has said it will spend a total of $1.8 billion to build three machines with exascale performance. The Frontier, or OLCF-5, supercomputer (which features a theoretical peak performance of 2 exaflops) was built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and is powered by AMD chips. Continue reading The U.S. Is Now Home to the World’s Fastest Supercomputer

Nvidia and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) debuted Perlmutter, an AI supercomputer that features 6,144 Nvidia A100 Tensor Core GPUs. Named for astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter, the supercomputer has been dubbed by Nvidia as “the fastest on the planet,” at processing with the 16-bit and 32-bit mixed-precision math used in AI applications, said the company’s global HPC and AI product marketing lead Dion Harris. Its first job will be to create the largest-ever 3D map of the visible universe. Continue reading Nvidia and NERSC Unveil a New Supercomputer for AI Tasks

The SolarWinds hack invaded at least nine U.S. government agencies and 100+ corporations. Now, Microsoft is at odds with Dell Technologies and IBM on the best way to secure data. Microsoft president Brad Smith stated that “cloud migration is critical to improving security maturity,” but the other two companies opine that a hybrid cloud and on-premise data storage is preferable. Smith stated that all the breached accounts Microsoft identified involved on-premise systems and that a hybrid system is more vulnerable to attacks. Continue reading After SolarWinds Hack, Big Tech Debates Cloud Data Security

Wi-Fi 6 has arrived, promising faster speeds, broader coverage and the ability to share connections across a single household’s wireless devices. The latter means that if one device is consuming huge amounts of data, it will not slow down the household’s other devices. The new generation Wi-Fi actually debuted in 2018 but is only now affordable enough and more widely available on Internet routers to become mainstream. While consumers can now purchase smartphones and computers including chips that enable use of Wi-Fi 6, the tech’s real benefits will likely have a stronger impact once households have more connected devices. Continue reading Wi-Fi 6 Will Eventually Benefit Homes with Connected Devices

In Silicon Valley, some tech companies, investors and venture capital firms are relocating to cities with lower costs and less traffic. Oracle is pulling up stakes in Redwood City, California and heading to Austin, Texas, saying it plans to implement remote-work policies. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is moving its headquarters to Houston, Texas, where Elon Musk, long a Los Angeleno, has also moved. Although the reasons for leaving vary, many relocations seem to have been triggered by rising costs and the COVID-19 pandemic. Continue reading Pandemic, Rising Costs Ignite Tech Exodus From Silicon Valley

Cloud Hopper, a massive cybertheft effort allegedly run by China’s intelligence services and operating through cloud services since at least 2016, is much bigger than it was originally believed to be. U.S. prosecutors identified and charged two Chinese nationals, but both remain at large. The original indictment listed 14 unnamed companies and about a dozen cloud providers. The Trump administration escalated the military’s use of cyber weapons, but hasn’t revealed its rules, leading to a bipartisan push for transparency. Continue reading China’s Cloud Hopper Cyberhack Bigger Than First Revealed

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is acquiring Cray, a pioneer in supercomputing, for about $1.4 billion. With 1,300 employees, Cray, based in Seattle, was founded by Seymour Cray in 1972 in Minnesota and purchased in 1996 by Silicon Graphics. The company was later sold in 2000 to Tera Computer, which changed its name to Cray. Cray designed some of the most powerful supercomputers used by the military, intelligence agencies and for civilian companies involved in weather prediction, pharmaceutical research and auto design. Continue reading HPE Acquires Cray, Advancing Supercomputing in the U.S.

Apple just revealed that it is investing $390 million in Finisar, the company that manufactures the chips used in Apple’s products for depth and proximity sensing. Apple has made use of the chip’s capabilities in some of its new features, including Face ID, Animoji and ARKit, the software development kit for augmented reality. The investment comes from Apple’s $1 billion Advanced Manufacturing Fund. The Sunnyvale, California-based Finisar will use the money to re-open a plant in Texas that will create 500 jobs. Continue reading Apple Invests $390M into Depth/Proximity Chip Maker Finisar

Hewlett Packard Enterprise introduced a prototype computer dubbed The Machine, which has a single 160-terabyte memory bank that can simultaneously process the data found in 160 million books. This never-before-accomplished feat reveals the potential of what’s called Memory-Driven Computing. The custom-built computer is, says HPE, the world’s largest single-memory computer, based on the largest R&D program in HPE’s history. The Machine, it adds, and its capabilities will be transformational. Continue reading HP Introduces Memory-Driven Computing With ‘The Machine’

At Discover 2016 in London this week, Hewlett Packard Enterprise revealed its early version of a working prototype for The Machine, which began as a research project in 2014. The prototype, in a Fort Collins, Colorado lab, tests the design that will soon be available to programmers to create software to exploit its capabilities. The Machine relies on memory technology to increase calculating speed, and will require a new kind of memory chip unlikely to be widely available before 2018 at the earliest. Continue reading The Machine: HPE Prototype Intros New Computing Paradigm

HP says it will offer computers to corporate clients for a fixed monthly fee, freeing them from having to make huge upfront outlays for hardware. Unlike standard computer rentals, however, HP will also offer software to manage the hardware, to make sure users have enough processing power and storage and to keep an eye on whether the devices are deployed as efficiently as possible. That includes making sure users do not have more sophisticated hardware or software than necessary for the task at hand. Continue reading HP Offers PCs and Software as a Service to Corporate Clients

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise hopes to be the leader in “persistent memory,” which greatly improves server speed, a boon to those dealing with increasing amounts of data. Other companies planning to use persistent memory include Oracle and Super Micro Computer, with component manufacturers Micron Technology, SanDisk, Netlist and the Viking Technology unit of Sanmina. Persistent memory combines flash memory and DRAM (dynamic random-access memory), to create DIMMs (direct in-line memory module). Continue reading HPE Plans to Enhance Servers with ‘Persistent Memory’ Tech

Hewlett-Packard reportedly plans to split its company into two parts, separating its personal computer and printer businesses from its corporate hardware and services operations. According to insiders, the company is expected to outline the plans today. A number of large companies have recently split, in an effort to better mange different growth profiles. The anticipated HP division could result in two publicly traded companies, with each entity worth in excess of $50 billion in annual revenue. Continue reading HP to Split PC, Printer Ops from Corporate Hardware, Services