Covering Scientific & Technical AI | Monday, June 29, 2026
Human Error Offsets Greater Datacenter Reliability
Despite the vastly improved reliability of datacenter gear and the rise of managed services to anticipate and limit consequences, an industry survey finds that datacenter outages remain common and costly. That’s unsettling, according to the Uptime Institute’s survey of known outages over the past year, since “the consequences are high, and possibly higher than in ... Full article
Microsoft, Novartis Team on AI-based Therapies
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis is teaming with Microsoft on a medical AI effort aimed at developing new data-driven techniques for drug discovery and development of specific therapies. The multi-year alliance announced this week would establish an AI innovation lab the drug maker would use to uncover new drug designs, cell and gene therapies as well ... Full article
DARPA Targets Network Bottlenecks
DARPA will seek to unclog the networking bottlenecks that are hindering wider use of powerful hardware in computing-intensive applications. The Pentagon research agency has unveiled another in a series of post-Moore’s Law computing initiatives, this one seeking an overhaul of the network stack and interfaces that fall well short of connecting high-end processors with external networks ... Full article
Advanced Technology on Wall Street – Rumors from the Trade Show Floor
New York is always an exciting, energetic city to visit and ... was made even more so as I attended the (recent) ‘HPC & AI on Wall Street’ conference, which HPCWire are now championing. It was well worth the train ride from Boston and interesting to see the varied mix of attendees present and hear how ... Full article
AI, ML, Deep Learning, and Active Learning: What’s the Difference?
Today, the terms artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are often used interchangeably. While the terms are related, they mean different things. We map out how they all relate to one another, so your team can find the best candidates, best approaches and best frameworks as you embark upon your AI journey. AI refers ... Full article
Chiplet Effort Advances for Workload Acceleration
Chiplet-based designs, so called because they combine multiple components into a single package, are increasingly seen as addressing the inability of general-purpose CPUs to handle skyrocketing performance requirements. Lower-cost chiplets have helped address the need for workload-specific accelerators, proponents note. Those workload requirements prompted the Open Compute Project (OCP) to launch a chiplet design project ... Full article
Attacking the AI Trust Gap: ‘FICO-like’ Risk Scoring for Machine Learning Models
Implementing machine learning is a minefield and a slog. Even after IT managers put in place an accelerated computing infrastructure required for AI, after data scientists and business managers agree on analytics projects the organization needs, after the data science team selects algorithms, builds models, prepares data, runs prototypes and makes everything operational – after ... Full article
Multi-Cloud Seen Driving Managed Services
The steady enterprise shift to hybrid and multi-cloud deployments brings with it added layers of complexity as adopters seek to salvage some legacy infrastructure while migrating critical workloads to cloud-native frameworks. Those requirements are said to be creating greater demand for managed services designed to demystify the transition. That’s among the conclusions of a vendor-sponsored ... Full article
Kubernetes and Containers in HPC and AI
Software containers and Kubernetes are important tools for building, deploying, running and managing modern enterprise applications at scale and delivering enterprise software faster and more reliably to the end user — while using resources more efficiently and reducing costs. Recently, high performance computing (HPC) and AI have moved closer to the enterprise and can therefore ... Full article
Hybrid Approach Emerges for AI Workloads
The discussion surrounding enterprise adoption of AI technologies is shifting from if to when, and what mix of IT infrastructure will be required to deploy and scale machine learning and other workloads. HPC vendors that have been making inroads in the enterprise market view AI as another opportunity. Among them is supercomputer leader Cray Inc. ... Full article
How Hambrecht Uses Machine Learning to Up its Venture Hit Rate 3X
Venture capital is a “hit business.” The relatively few hits pay for the high percentage of flops. Venture capitalists are risk takers who embrace the high-risk/high-reward equation. It's the allure of a mega-hit that animates the industry, that keeps investors dreaming, prospecting and writing checks. But is frequent venture failure inescapable? Could a more probabilistic ... Full article
AWS Upgrades Nvidia GPU Cloud Instances for Inferencing, Graphics
Graphics processor acceleration in the form of G4 cloud instances have been unleashed by Amazon Web Services for machine learning applications. AWS (NASDAQ: AMZN) on Friday (Sept. 20) announced general availability of the new Elastic Compute Cloud instance providing access to Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) T4 Tensor Core GPUs, which are based on the Turing architecture. The ... Full article
How the OCP NIC 3.0 is Making Hyperscale Data Centers Cooler
Managing and storing more data has forced hyperscale data center companies to reexamine not just how they build a data center but also the thousands of servers housed inside – including the connectors for server components. Hyperscale data centers have the purchasing power and platform to work directly with manufacturers and engineer the optimized server. ... Full article
The Cloud Services Market is Booming
Enterprise cloud spending far outpaces investments in other IT infrastructure, according to a mid-year assessment that pegs cloud spending at a healthy $150 billion. Synergy Research Group reported this week that cloud services and infrastructure spending across seven market segments grew 24 percent over the first half of 2018. Infrastructure and platform services led the ... Full article
Kubernetes Adds API, Windows Upgrades
As the de facto standard Kubernetes cluster orchestrator moves deeper into enterprise IT infrastructure, version updates are coming a faster pace. The third release in 2019 comes with a grand total of 31 “enhancements” in various stages of production readiness ranging from “alpha” to “stable.” Many of the latest upgrades target API management and Windows-based ... Full article
Is All-Flash Storage Needed for Deep Learning?
Organizations building deep learning data pipelines may struggle with their accelerated I/O needs, and whenever I/O is the question, the usual answer is “throw flash/SSD at it.” Certainly expensive all-flash storage arrays are highly beneficial for line-of-business applications (and to storage vendors’ sales). But DL applications and workflows are inherently different from typical file-based workloads, ... Full article
Dell’s AMD-Powered Server Line Targets High-End Jobs
Dell Technologies rolled out redesigned servers this week based on AMD’s latest Epyc processor that are geared toward data-driven workloads running on increasingly popular multi-cloud platforms. Dell, which has seen its lead shrink in the contracting global server market, is banking on AMD’s 7-nm Rome server processor introduced in August to provide the bandwidth and computational ... Full article
AI-HPC Convergence in Financial Services: Getting Real about Real Time
Intra-day rebalancing of risk portfolios initiated by voice command while at home, central bank-backed cryptocurrencies, transaction clearing and settlement cut  from three days to a few hours – these and other capabilities could become realities in the financial services industry (FSI) as exascale-class HPC converges with evolving AI, blockchain, IoT and 5G technologies. Discussed at ... Full article
Enterprise Networks Still Falling Short
Network bandwidth and overall performance remain concerns for digital enterprises as they roll out data analytics and edge computing efforts. Nearly two-thirds of companies surveyed by management consultant Accenture (NYSE: CAN) said their enterprise networks are not up to the task of handling big data and Internet of Things deployments. A key reason is a ... Full article
AWS, Bloomberg Go Global with Data Feed
Bloomberg, the financial data giant, is expanding its partnership with Amazon Web Services to extend private cloud access to its real-time market data feed to global customers. The partners announced the availability of Bloomberg’s flagship B-PIPE service on AWS (NASDAQ: AMZN) last November, giving U.S. clients cloud access to real-time market data previously delivered via terminals. ... Full article