Author Archives: George Leopold

George Leopold

George Leopold has written about science and technology for more than 30 years, focusing on electronics and aerospace technology. He previously served as executive editor of Electronic Engineering Times. Leopold is the author of "Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom" (Purdue University Press, 2016).

GigaSpaces Orchestrates Cloud Spin-Off

July 27th, 2017 Comments Off

In a bid to sharpen its focus on the booming market for cloud management, in-memory computing specialist GigaSpaces Technologies is spinning off its Cloudify unit into a new company that will concentrate on delivering cloud applications as well as ...

Microsoft Unveils AI Chip

July 25th, 2017 Comments Off

Microsoft said this week it is developing a new version of an AI-based coprocessor for implementing "deep" neural networks expected to be incorporated into augmented reality goggles. The second version of the HoloLens holographic processing unit (HPU) crunches information ...

DARPA, Chipmakers Seek Path Beyond Moore’s Law

July 24th, 2017 Comments Off

The U.S. military long ago ceded dominance in electronics innovation to Silicon Valley, the DoD-backed powerhouse that has driven microelectronic generation for decades. With Moore's Law clearly running out of steam, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is ...

‘Neural’ Network Fabric Boosts Server Links

July 21st, 2017 Comments Off

As network bottlenecks mount in datacenters—a hurdle that will only get worse with the deployment of business analytics using machine learning—there is a growing need for networking solutions that can scale to tens of thousands of connections without breaking ...

‘Colossus’ IPU Targets Datacenters, Cloud

July 21st, 2017 Comments Off

A second $30 million funding round for U.K. AI chip developer Graphcore sets up the company to go to market with its “intelligent processing unit” (IPU) in 2017 with scale-up production for enterprise datacenters and cloud environments planned in ...

Intel Rolls AI Toolkit

July 20th, 2017 Comments Off

Intel has begun rolling out AI hardware previewed last fall with the release of its Movidius Neural Compute Stick, billed as a self-contained AI accelerator in a USB format that requires no network connection. The chipmaker said Thursday (July ...

Rackspace Partners With Pivotal, Expands With Google

July 20th, 2017 Comments Off

Cloud manager Rackspace is working with cloud services provider Pivotal Software and Google's public cloud unit to deliver new multi-cloud and other capabilities. The partnerships include management of Pivotal's growing Cloud Foundry platform. Rackspace said this week it would ...

Specs Target Container Portability

July 19th, 2017 Comments Off

Application containers are getting more portable across different implementations thanks to a two-year effort to forge "vendor neutral" specifications released this week by an industry group. The Open Container Initiative (OCI) unveiled version 1.0 specifications addressing a container runtime ...

Open Source Driving DevOps Automation

July 18th, 2017 Comments Off

Heightened awareness about the security risks associated with open source software has increased use of disciplined DevOps practices that have improved application quality and developer productivity, a software supply chain survey finds. With open source software making major inroads ...

IBM Rolls ‘Pervasive’ Encryption As Threats Grow

July 17th, 2017 Comments Off

As more stringent data protection rules enter into force, increasing enterprise requirements for encryption, IBM is stepping into the breach with an encryption engine based on its Z Systems mainframe aimed at locking down data across applications, cloud platforms ...