NVIDIA releases Magnum IO software line to help reduce data bottlenecks for data scientists and AI, HPC researchers

NVIDIA introduced NVIDIA Magnum IO, a suite of software to help data scientists and AI and high performance computing researchers process massive amounts of data in minutes, rather than hours. This offering ahs been developed in close collaboration with vendors in networking and storage, including DataDirect Networks, Excelero, IBM, Mellanox and WekaIO.

Optimized to eliminate storage and input/output bottlenecks, Magnum IO delivers up to 20 times faster data processing for multi-server, multi-GPU computing nodes when working with massive datasets to carry out complex financial analysis, climate modeling and other HPC workloads.

At the heart of Magnum IO is GPUDirect, which provides a path for data to bypass CPUs and travel on “open highways” offered by GPUs, storage and networking devices. Compatible with a wide range of communications interconnects and APIs — including NVIDIA NVLink and NCCL, as well as OpenMPI and UCX — GPUDirect is composed of peer-to-peer and RDMA elements.

Its newest element is GPUDirect Storage, which enables researchers to bypass CPUs when accessing storage and quickly access data files for simulation, analysis or visualization.

Magnum IO integrates infrastructure elements to maximize storage and network I/O performance and functionality. It optimizes IO performance by bypassing the CPU to enable direct IO between GPU memory and network storage. It also relieves CPU contention to create a more balanced GPU-accelerated system and delivers peak IO bandwidth with up to ten times fewer CPU cores, and provides optimized implementation for current and future platforms, whether the data transfers are latency sensitive, bandwidth sensitive, or collectives.

NVIDIA Magnum IO software is available, with the exception of GPUDirect Storage, which is currently available to select early-access customers. Broader release of GPUDirect Storage is planned for the first half of next year.

Zadara Storage deploys at Cologix's Columbus data center campus to leverage connectivity, cloud on-ramp to AWS, ecosystem

Cologix, a network-neutral interconnection and hyperscale edge data center company, has announced that Zadara Storage recently deployed its enterprise cloud storage platform at Cologix's Columbus data center campus and interconnection hub.

The Columbus data center market has exploded in recent years due its geographic proximity to roughly half of the U.S. population, offering low latency connectivity options with strong tax incentives and low environmental risks. 

Cologix Columbus is one of the largest and most advanced data centers in the Midwest. A Tier III Certified facility, Cologix Columbus purpose-built for enterprises and large customers that need critical power with complete uptime, robust connectivity through more than 50 onsite carriers and its ecosystem, as well as direct access to major cloud providers.

Zadara Storage already deployed with Cologix in Montreal earlier this year, where it operates 10 traditional and hyperscale data centers with more than 100 MW and direct on-ramps to such cloud services as Amazon Web Services Direct Connect, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, IBM Cloud and Oracle FastConnect.

"We are pleased Zadara Storage selected Cologix to support the explosive growth in demand for their enterprise storage-as-a-service solution," said Laura Ortman, president and chief revenue officer of Cologix. "We welcome them into our robust interconnection hub in Columbus with access to major cloud on-ramps like AWS and connectivity to our Cloud Access Marketplace."

Volvo Cars part of Responsible Sourcing Blockchain network, launched by IBM, Ford and Volkswagen Group

The Responsible Sourcing Blockchain Network (RSBN), a blockchain network committed to strengthening human rights and environmental protection in mineral supply chains, announced that its digital supply chain for cobalt has moved beyond pilot phase and is progressing toward use in live production computing environments starting in spring 2020. 

Built on the IBM Blockchain Platform and assured by RCS Global Group, RSBN will have continued participation from founding members including Ford Motor Company, Volkswagen, LG Chem and Huayou Cobalt. Volvo Cars will join the network as its newest member with further partners from the automobile, technology and mining sectors expected to join this year. 

Providing traceability and verification of responsible sourcing practices from mine to market, including the end-to-end supply chains, the solution is a network accessible to companies at every tier of the supply chain, which complete an onboarding assessment verifying the members responsible sourcing practices. 

Blockchain makes it possible to securely and at-scale identify and label any subject and object entity with cryptographically verifiable security credentials. When literally everything is labeled with verifiable, authoritative, machine-readable security credentials (such as classification level, access category and others), multi-level security (MLS) systems can enforce mandatory and discretionary access controls and other MLS-specific isolation.

Focus industries include, but are not limited to automotive and consumer electronics, including their supply chains and the mining sector. A governance board representing members across these industries is being formed to help further ensure the platform's growth, functionality and adherence to good practice principles.

RSBN and its participants are building an open, industry-wide blockchain platform to trace responsibly produced minerals from source through to end product, with RCS Global assessing each participating entity against responsible sourcing requirements set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and industry bodies.   

"We are setting in motion a process of mainstreaming responsible sourcing practices across major industries," said Dr. Nicholas Garrett, CEO of RCS Global Group. "We've reached significant new milestones as we've moved beyond testing, proving the merits of this coupled technology and assurance model can extend to a wide range of participants across every tier of the supply chain and to other minerals. The early addition of Volkswagen Group and now Volvo Cars to this collaboration confirms that blockchain technology together with responsible sourcing assurance can help address critical sustainability issues impacting the entire industry," he adds.  

Volvo Cars will be the initial company in the consortium to fully apply the RSBN solution in its LG Chem supply chain beginning in spring 2020.  The automaker also plans to apply RSBN to other key minerals found in its batteries, including nickel and lithium in the future. 

Volkswagen AG has been working with relevant battery suppliers to address the need for supply chain due diligence and is now aiming to significantly increase its supply chain mapping and auditing activities for key battery mineral supply chains. 

Through the RSBN, and other initiatives, Volkswagen AG is utilizing technology toward securing better supply chain traceability and transparency and to connect this information with the sustainability performance of supply chain partners. 

Ford states that as they are preparing to launch their global all-electric Mustang-inspired SUV next year, the RSBN becomes an important tool to strengthen transparency and visibility into its global mineral supply chain. Expanding this network beyond cobalt to other battery minerals will compound the RBSN's positive impact on human rights protection and labor practices.

In initial testing, the RSBN blockchain demonstrated how cobalt produced at Huayou's industrial mine site in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) could be traced through the supply chain to LG Chem's cathode and battery plant in South Korea, and then to its final destination, a Ford plant in the United States. An immutable audit trail captured on the platform delivered corresponding data providing documentation for the initial ethical cobalt production, its maintenance and its ethical provenance from mine to end manufacturer.

RCS Global Group builds on its supply chain mapping and auditing activities for global OEMs and key battery mineral supply chains and has successfully assessed and validated each supply chain participant against responsible sourcing standards developed by the OECD, as well as the good practice requirements of relevant industry organizations like the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) Blockchain Guidelines.

IBM releases financial services- ready public cloud platform to meet specific compliance and security requirements

IBM announced this week that it has designed a financial services-ready public cloud. IBM will welcome financial services institutions, and their suppliers, to join the financial services-ready public cloud. 

The financial services-ready public cloud is expected to run on IBM's public cloud, which uses Red Hat OpenShift as its primary Kubernetes environment to manage containerized software across the enterprise, and includes more than 190 API driven, cloud native PaaS services to create new and enhanced cloud-native apps. 

The project draws upon technology and financial services industry experience earned through IBM's relationships with 47 of the Fortune 50 companies and the 10 largest financial institutions globally.  Additionally, to help promote a regulatory compliant environment, IBM and Bank of America are working with Promontory, an IBM business unit and provider of financial services regulatory compliance consulting. 

Bank of America will be a committed collaborator to use the platform built on IBM's public cloud. The Bank will host key applications and workloads to support the requirements and privacy and safety expectations of its 66 million banking customers. 

The financial services-ready public cloud has been designed to help address the requirements of financial services institutions for regulatory compliance, security and resiliency. This will help financial institutions transact with technology vendors who have met the platform's requirements. 

It is the only industry-specific public cloud platform that can provide preventative and compensatory controls for financial services regulatory workloads, multi-architecture support and proactive and automated security, leveraging the industry's highest levels of encryption certification.

To help develop the control requirements for the platform, IBM has collaborated intensively with Bank of America. The financial services-ready public cloud can potentially enable Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers – from the smallest FinTechs to more established vendors – to focus on their core offerings to financial institutions with the controls for the platform put in place.

"This is one of the most important collaborations in the financial services industry cloud space," said Cathy Bessant, chief operations and technology officer, Bank of America. "This industry-first platform will allow Bank of America to use the public cloud, putting data security, resiliency, privacy and customer information safety needs at the forefront of decision making. By setting a standard that addresses the concern of hosting highly-confidential information, we aim to drive the public cloud to a safety level that is unmatched."

The collaboration with IBM marks the next step in Bank of America's seven-year cloud journey and reflects the Bank's unwavering commitment to the security and privacy of banking customers while also creating an opportunity to address the unique regulatory and compliance requirements of the financial services industry.  

"The financial services-ready public cloud represents an ongoing focus from Bank of America, IBM and Promontory to help develop a technology ecosystem where regulations can be addressed," said Bridget van Kralingen, Senior Vice President, Global Industries, Clients, Platforms & Blockchain, IBM. "Together we plan to help our customer address their ongoing compliance requirements, coupled with highly scalable, standardized capabilities that will be built to help serve today's modern financial services industry." 

"We recognize that we must help create an environment where financial services institutions can address their regulatory requirements and expectations," said Gene Ludwig, Promontory Founder and CEO. "Bank of America, IBM and Promontory are uniquely suited to help give the industry and vendors confidence in the quality of this cloud platform." 

The financial services-ready public cloud will help give financial institutions an opportunity to more efficiently assess the security, resiliency and compliance of their technology vendors. Participating financial services software providers may benefit from the platform's security validation. Only ISV or SaaS providers that demonstrate they comply with the platform's policies will be eligible to deliver offerings through the platform.

Samsung and IBM now offer 5G and AI-powered mobile offerings on IBM Cloud for enterprises

Samsung Electronics and IBM announced at the Samsung Developer Conference, a new joint platform leveraging IBM Cloud and AI capabilities, and Samsung's mobile offerings. The collaboration between the two companies brings together IBM's capabilities with the Samsung Galaxy ecosystem for enterprise customers.

This announcement is designed to bring together IBM's cloud innovations and Samsung's Galaxy devices ecosystems, including Galaxy Tabs, Galaxy smartphones, and Galaxy Watches. This is aimed to help improve the work environments for police officers, firefighters and other first responders.

According to the International Labour Organization, nearly 3-million deaths occur each year due to occupational accidents. Governments and enterprises have an increasing need to build systems which track the health vitals of workers in remote or high-stress environments.

Built on the IBM Cloud, the new platform will now position clients to track a worker's vitals, including heart rate and physical activity, to determine if that person meets their definition of distress and dispatch help. 

For example, equipped with Samsung's Galaxy Watches with biometric sensors and Galaxy smartphones enabled with 5G capability, first responders will have their safety and wellness indicators shared on this platform in real time. 

The solution continually tracks their vital signs and other key indicators to instantly alert emergency managers if there is a change in any of these data points, which may indicate the responder may be in danger of a heart attack, heat exhaustion, or any other potentially life-threatening event requiring immediate attention. The platform transmits the data to emergency managers to provide insights for their decision-making.

On this new platform, Samsung reports that its high-speed Galaxy devices can now be used at scale almost anywhere. These devices can be customized to withstand intense environments, such as those encountered by a soldier in the field, power plant employees working in harsh weather conditions, an emergency worker responding to a disaster or a worker in a mining plant.

Currently being piloted by multiple police forces, this new solution provides real time health and situational awareness insights on first responders to reduce operational risks in the field.

Samsung's fit-for-purpose design approach and IBM Garage Methodology creates an open collaboration, accelerating how the two companies test and launch new business ideas with advanced cloud services. This approach integrates practices grounded in deep industry expertise at global scale through culture change into a single approach and driving enterprise design thinking.

The two companies are also collaborating across multiple industries to bring the power of IBM and Samsung to bear, including financial services, energy and healthcare. In addition, with the digitization of the manufacturing industry, this partnership lays the foundation for the automation of factories to become efficient and productive with advanced network services and 5G.

Developers can access and utilize the technology behind the platform and build further capabilities on top to impact other vertical industries like manufacturing, defense and retail.

"IBM continues to bring leading cloud and AI capabilities with deep industry expertise to our enterprise clients," said Martin Schroeter, senior vice president of global markets from IBM. "Together, IBM and Samsung will use the power of IBM Cloud, 5G, AI and edge computing to enable our clients to leverage these advanced technologies to have greater impact on the way people work, shop and protect their health and families."

"The mobile industry is undergoing a dramatic transformation and opening up new ways of business by bringing innovative technologies like 5G, AI and IoT to enterprises," said DJ Koh, President and CEO of IT & Mobile Communications Division, Samsung Electronics. "We believe open collaboration is central to unlocking these opportunities and look forward to driving digital transformation for our enterprise clients in the 5G era with IBM and Samsung's mobile devices and connected services."