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).

Intel Xpoint Storage Targets Datacenter

March 20th, 2017 Comments Off

Intel Corp. has begun shipping new storage drives based on its 3-D XPoint non-volatile memory technology as it targets data-driven workloads. Intel's new Optane solid-state drives, designated P4800X, seek to combine the attributes of memory and storage in the ...

CoreOS, Docker Donate Container Engines

March 16th, 2017 Comments Off

Applications container pioneers are donating infrastructure building blocks to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation in hopes of encouraging continued collaboration and interoperability in an increasingly competitive sector. CoreOS and Docker said this week they would each donate foundational runtime ...

DevOps Survey: IT Teams Must Be Flexible

March 15th, 2017 Comments Off

The rise of hybrid IT infrastructure and, with it, expanded use of cloud and micro- services along with containers to deploy distributed applications is taxing IT staffs and driving requirements for greater automation in areas such as compliance, according ...

Lenovo Debuts Server-Based Storage Appliance

March 14th, 2017 Comments Off

Seeking to stimulate flagging server sales, a software-defined storage appliance from Lenovo leverages its server platform combined with a storage virtualization software and storage area networking from partner DataCore Software. Lenovo (HKSE: 992) said this week its storage appliance ...

Intel Buys Car Computer Vision Specialist Mobileye

March 13th, 2017 Comments Off

Intel Corp. continued its foray into the autonomous vehicle sector this week with the acquisition of computer vision and machine-learning specialist Mobileye for about $15 billion in cash. Betting that autonomous vehicles are emerging as "data centers on wheels," ...

Intel, Alibaba Demo FPGAs in Cloud

March 10th, 2017 Comments Off

Chinese online retailer Alibaba is collaborating with Intel Corp. on a pilot program to leverage the chipmaker's Xeon-FPGA platform to accelerate the delivery of cloud-based enterprise applications. The partners said Alibaba's Aliyun cloud service would incorporate Xeon-based servers and ...

Facebook Upgrades Servers With AI Training

March 9th, 2017 Comments Off

Facebook unveiled new compute and storage servers this week along with custom training server platform as part of a server "refresh." Along with its Bryce Canyon storage server and Yosemite v2 and Tioga Pass compute servers, the social media ...

Is Second Generation the Charm for ARM?

March 8th, 2017 Comments Off

A new front in the heretofore Intel-dominated battle to deliver processing power to the datacenter opened this week when Microsoft and Cavium Inc., the ARM server processor specialist, announced they are collaborating on running Azure cloud workloads on Cavium's ...

HPE Adds ‘Predictive Flash’ with Storage Deal

March 7th, 2017 Comments Off

Hewlett Packard Enterprise continued its headlong push into the hybrid IT market with its second large acquisition of 2017: a $1 billion deal to acquire flash specialist Nimble Storage Inc. The company (NYSE: HPE) announced Tuesday (March 7) it ...

IBM Touts Hybrid Approach to Quantum Computing

March 6th, 2017 Comments Off

IBM is attempting to move quantum computing to the mainstream via an application-programming interface and other software tools that would allow developers to build interfaces between its cloud-based quantum machine and digital computers. The accelerating trend toward linking quantum ...