Covering Scientific & Technical AI | Monday, June 29, 2026
Google Embraces AMD Epyc Rome CPU for Cloud, Internal Workloads
This week’s big tech news – AMD’s release of the Epyc Rome CPU, the industry’s first 7nm server chip – got a major boost when Google confirmed that it now uses the new processor for internal workloads and will soon make it available to Google Cloud customers. In AMD’s struggle to take market share from ... Full article
AMD Launches Epyc Rome, First 7nm CPU
From a gala event at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco yesterday (Aug. 7), AMD launched its 2nd generation Epyc Rome chips, based on its 7nm process technology. The new AMD Epyc 7002 series is a follow-on to the first-gen 14nm Epyc Naples CPUs, released in June 2017. The announcement marks a significant ... Full article
Another Week, Another Kubernetes Security Flaw
The latest security vulnerability discovered within the Kubernetes cluster orchestrator could allow intruders to access, modify or delete computing and storage resources configured across a cluster. The flaw in the Kubernetes server API, designated CVE-2019-11247, allows access and deletion of those “custom resources.” Intruders could access cluster-wide resources with only standard role-based access control, or ... Full article
AMD, HPE Team to Top Server Benchmarks
Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Advanced Micro Devices are claiming a batch of benchmark performance records for HPE servers equipped with AMD’s latest Epyc processor. The virtualization performance and power efficiency world records announced this week were achieved on HPE ProLiant DL325 and DL385 servers equipped with the second-generation AMD Epyc Rome processor that launched today ... Full article
Lenovo Debuts Single-Socket Servers with AMD Epyc Rome 7nm CPUs
No summer doldrums here. In an intense week for leading chip and server companies, Lenovo today launched two new single-socket servers, the ThinkSystem SR635 and SR655, built with AMD’s new Epyc 7nm 7002 CPU, with up to 64 cores and 128 PCIe lanes. The news follows FPGA launches earlier this week from  Xilinx and Intel, ... Full article
Intel Adds 56-core Socketed Cooper Lake
Intel today announced that its forthcoming Cooper Lake Xeon Scalable processors, based on Intel’s 14nm++ process, will come with up to 56-cores in a socketed form factor, leveraging the capabilities from its Xeon Platinum 9200 series. The new chip — the first to support bfloat16, targeting AI workloads — is packaged in a multichip module ... Full article
Xilinx vs. Intel: FPGA Market Leaders Launch Server Accelerator Cards
The two FPGA market leaders, Intel and Xilinx, both announced new accelerator cards this week designed to handle specialized, compute-intensive workloads and unburden already overworked CPUs in data center servers. Xilinx today announced the Alveo U50 accelerator card, which the company said delivers between 10 and 20x improvements in throughput, latency and power efficiency for ... Full article
Kubernetes Developer Mesosphere Rebrands as D2iQ
Kubernetes, the de facto standard cluster orchestrator, continues to transform an expanding ecosystem of enterprise cloud vendors to the point where some are changing their identity to reflect the steady shift to cloud native and open source tools aimed at scaling distributed applications. Case in point is D2iQ, the new handle for Mesosphere, the datacenter ... Full article
Mass Shootings, Contraband Cargo in Crosshairs of AI, Advanced Scanning
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared last December and has been updated to reflect recent developments at Liberty Defense. AI may be on the cusp of making inroads against two menaces of modern life: mass shootings and terrorism. Two start-ups have technologies under development designed to spot bad actors and bad cargo before they can ... Full article
Hacker Traffic Havoc: Stalled Autonomous Cars and City-wide Gridlock
Another potential source of skepticism about self-driving cars has cropped up, one that the auto industry may need to quell in the public mind: a new report depicts hackers causing autonomous vehicle (AV)-driven gridlock tying up entire parts of cities. And it wouldn’t be very difficult: it’s a matter of randomly stranding a portion of ... Full article
Google Cloud Adds VMware Options
Google continues to expand its cloud offerings for priority enterprise workloads with the addition of VMware virtualization options. The partners announced this week VMware’s Cloud Foundation will be supported on Google Cloud as both infrastructure vendors look to expand their reach to database and other application workloads. “Both Google Cloud and VMware believe that customers ... Full article
Intel Omni-Path Interconnect: One and Done
Intel Corp.’s plans to make a big splash in the network fabric market for linking HPC, AI and other high performance workloads has apparently belly-flopped. The chip maker confirmed to EnterpriseAI the outlines of an earlier report by the website CRN that it has jettisoned plans for a second-generation version of its Omni-Path interconnect. "Intel will ... Full article
Xilinx–SolarFlare Deal Closes, Combines FPGAs, High Performance Networks
In a year of major M&A activity in the high performance technology sector, Xilinx announced today the closing of its acquisition of low latency network provider SolarFlare, whose speedy network interface card (NIC) technology is widely used by financial services and hyperscalers. When the planned acquisition was announced in April, Xilinx said the acquisition would ... Full article
Google’s ‘Stadia’ Is a Massive Data Windfall. Who Will Benefit?
For the first time, Google is positioning itself as a competitor to the likes of PlayStation and Xbox with its new offering, Stadia, a cloud-based gaming service – with both free and paid tiers – that allows gamers to play computationally demanding games on a variety of low-power devices (budget laptops, phones and Chromecasts) by ... Full article
Red Hat Usage Data: IBM AI Gold Mine?
Data may have been a major – and under-appreciated – factor compelling Big Blue to plunk down $34 billion for Red Hat, a deal (the third largest in tech industry history) that closed earlier this month. The acquisition’s overt rationale, of course, is Red Hat’s open source enterprise Linux and OpenShift platforms for workload portability ... Full article
Kubernetes, Container Security Woes Evolving
Kubernetes security has emerged as a booming business as deployments enter production and security vendors release a steady stream of user surveys pinpointing specific pain points in production container rollouts. The latest example comes from StackRox, a security vendor targeting enterprises struggling to lock down their application container and Kubernetes cluster orchestrator deployments. StackRox, which ... Full article
Easing AI Access: ‘Citizen Data Scientists’ and Humanized Machine Learning
IDC estimates worldwide data volume is set to rise by 61 percent between 2018 and 2025 – eventually reaching 175 zettabytes – with much of this generated by businesses. So how can this be harnessed to optimize business processes, improve day-to-day operations and inform decision-making? The answer lies with “humanized machine learning platforms,” which are ... Full article
Intel Charges Spark Workloads with Optane Persistent Memory
Intel didn’t wow chip lovers earlier this year with the launch of its 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors “Cascade Lake” processors, which are based on the same 14nm process as the first generation processors. But the launch also included the delivery of Optane Data Center Persistent Memory Module (DCPMM), which is poised to deliver ... Full article
Cloud Foundry Gets Another Security Layer
A runtime security tool released this week by Aqua Security allows users of Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry platform to scan container-based and cloud native applications from development through production workloads. The partners said Tuesday (July 30) the security service can be used to automatically scan applications or container artifacts for known vulnerabilities and malware. Scans can ... Full article
SoftBank Launches 2nd $100 Billion-Plus AI Investment Fund
The march of money – big money – into AI continues. On the heels of Microsoft’s investment of $1 billion in OpenAI’s R&D of artificial general intelligence, SoftBank has announced a blockbuster $108 billion private fund comprised mainly of American and Asian investors. Softbank Group Corp. said it will invest $38 billion and that the ... Full article