With all that rage of artificial intelligence (AI) powering driverless cars, the same technology can also be used to keep drivers safe. It can acts like a guardian angel and look our for danger (watch […]
Category: Enterprise
Enhancing public safety
Motorola Solutions has unveiled highly advanced technology solutions to enhance the capabilities of nation-wide public safety networks at Critical Communications World 2017 in Hong Kong. These include mission-critical radio technologies, specialised software, mission critical broadband, command […]
From professional skills to utilities
Robots driven by artificial intelligence (AI) are replacing workers in various labour-intensive and service sectors but doctors, lawyers and even IT professionals are at risk of being made redundant. Or at least, certain aspects of each of these practices.
According to Gartner, smart machines and robots may replace highly trained professionals in tasks within medicine, law and IT by 2022 — that’s just five years more!
“The economics of AI and machine learning will lead to many tasks performed by professionals today becoming low-cost utilities. AI’s effects on different industries will force the enterprise to adjust its business strategy. Many competitive, high-margin industries will become more like utilities as AI turns complex work into a metered service that the enterprise pays for, like electricity,” said Stephen Prentice, Vice President and Gartner Fellow.
Battle for the cloud
The battle for cloud dominance has intensified with key players all growing significantly in Q1. The worldwide cloud infrastructure services market grew 42 percent year on year to reach US$11.4 billion, according to Canalys.
Amazon’s AWS maintained its leadership, holding a stable global market share of 31 percent. It was followed by Microsoft, Google and IBM.
In terms of growth, Microsoft led with 93 percent while Google was up 74 percent, AWS 43 percent, and IBM 38 percent.
Deep Instinct is Most Disruptive Startup
Hundreds of thousands of computers in 150 countries have been hit by the WannaCry ransomware. While users are scampering around trying to fix their computers, the top of mind question is whether this could have […]
GTC draws the big guns!
As a sign of its coming of age, the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) held annually in San Jose, California since 2009, is no longer a niche event but one that is drawing the who’s who […]
Toyota cruises with NVIDIA Drive PX2
Toyota, one of the world’s largest automakers and renowned for its high standards and priority on safety, has picked NVIDIA Drive PX for its autonomous vehicles. It will use the AI car computer platform to power advanced autonomous driving systems planned for market introduction within the next few years
Engineering teams from the two companies are already developing sophisticated software that will enhance the capabilities of Toyota vehicles, enabling them to better understand the massive volume of data generated by sensors on the car, and to handle the broad spectrum of autonomous driving situations.
“Toyota has worked on autonomous driving technologies for over 20 years with the aim of reducing traffic fatalities to zero as an ultimate goal, achieving smoother traffic, and providing mobility for all. Through this collaboration, we intend to accelerate the development of autonomous driving systems that are even more safe and capable,” said Ken Koibuchi, Executive General Manager of Toyota.
Finally, the Big Bang for AI!
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not new. In fact, it has so many false starts over the past 60 years. The term went into hibernation for a long time.
Research into AI began way back in Dartmouth College in 1956 and was constantly associated with being the next frontier in the 1980s when mainframe computers ruled and supercomputers were a ginormous investment that very few could afford.
Despite the research put in over the years, the technology never quite took off and fell flat in many instances.
Voila, Volta!
NVIDIA has pulled yet another trick out of its always-filled hat of technology goodies with the launch of Volta, the world’s most powerful GPU computing architecture. At his keynote address at GTC in San Jose, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang dubbed it “the next level of computer projects”.
Volta is created to drive the next wave of advancement in artificial intelligence (AI) and high performance computing.
The first Volta-based processor is the NVIDIA Tesla V100 data centre GPU, which brings extraordinary speed and scalability for AI inferencing and training, as well as for accelerating HPC and graphics workloads.
The making of GTC
By Edward Lim I am attending the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California this week. It’s a massive conference with more than 7,000 participants from all around the world. After decades of covering and […]
NVIDIA to train 100,000 deep learning developers this year
Interest in deep learning is growing so strongly that NVIDIA expects to train 100,000 developers this year — that’s 10 times more than last year —through its Deep Learning Institute (DLI).
According to research firm IDC, 80 percent of all applications will have an artificial intelligence (AI) component by 2020.
Greg Estes, Vice President of Developer Programs at NVIDIA, noted that there is a hunger for deep learning training. He cited the example of a DLI training at India Institute of Technology (IIT) in India where people came at 7.30am to try to sign up for a fully subscribed course.
Singapore goes big on AI
Singapore is banking big on artificial intelligence to provide solutions in finance, city management and healthcare. The National Research Foundation (NRF) will be investing up to S$150 million over the next five years in AI.SG, […]
Caffe2, anyone?
Facebook is developing new artificial intelligent (AI) systems to help manage the vast amount of information — such as text, images and videos — generated daily so people can better understand the world and communicate more effectively, even as the volume of information increases.
It has worked with NVIDIA on Caffe2, a new AI deep learning framework that allows developers and researchers to create large-scale distributed training scenarios and build machine learning applications for edge devices.
Providing AI-powered services on mobile is a complex data processing task that must happen within the blink of an eye. Increasingly, the processing of lightning-fast AI services requires GPU-accelerated computing, such as that offered by Facebook’s Big Basin servers, as well as highly optimised deep learning software that can leverage the full capability of the accelerated hardware.
No more IDF
After nearly two decades, Intel has decided to bring the curtains down on its annual Intel Developer Forum(IDF). Even the China edition has been canned. A highly anticipated and popular event, IDF was the platform […]
Rise of accelerated computing in data centres
Can’t say this was unexpected as NVIDIA retorts Google’s claim that its custom ASIC Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) was up to 30 times faster than CPUs and NVIDIA’s K80 G for inferencing workloads.
NVIDIA pointed out that Google’s TPU paper has drawn a clear conclusion – without accelerated computing, the scale-out of AI is simply not practical.
The role of data centres has changed considerably in today’s economy. Instead of just serving web pages, advertising and video content, data centres are now recognising voices, detecting images in video streams and connecting users with information they need when they need it.
Massive shift to hybrid infrastructure services underway
The growth of cloud and industrialised services and the decline of traditional data centre outsourcing (DCO) indicate a massive shift toward hybrid infrastructure services, according to Gartner.
In a report containing a series of predictions about IT infrastructure services, Gartner analysts said that by 2020, cloud, hosting and traditional infrastructure services will come in more or less at par in terms of spending.
“As the demand for agility and flexibility grows, organizations will shift toward more industrialised, less-tailored options. Organisations that adopt hybrid infrastructure will optimise costs and increase efficiency. However, it increases the complexity of selecting the right toolset to deliver end-to-end services in a multisourced environment,” said DD Mishra, Research Director of Gartner.
APAC govt increasing investment in IoT technologies
Governments in Asia Pacific are notably vested in the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies because it enables a broad new range of citizen services, according to IDC’s 2016 Global IoT Decision Maker Survey.
Based on the survey, 40 percent of Asia-Pacific government organisations are investing on IoT solutions in the next 12 months while 50 percent of them are investing in an IoT solution in next 12 to 24 months.
“Improving productivity, improving time to market for products/services and improving energy efficiency reducing costs are the top benefits of an IoT solution. IoT enables access to new and granular data sources, empowered by swift connectivity and quick data gathering capability giving access to a wider range of information that enhances the quality of government services at a scale, which previously has been thought to be unattainable,” said Shreyashi Pal, Market Analyst, IDC Asia/Pacific Government and Education Insights.
Singapore universities deploy deep learning supercomputers
First, it was Singapore Management University (SMU). Now two other Singapore universities — Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) — have also deployed the NVIDIA DGX-1 deep learning supercomputer for their research projects on artificial intelligence (AI).
SUTD will use the DGX-1 at the SUTD Brain Lab to further research into machine reasoning and distributed learning. Under a memorandum of understanding signed earlier this month, NVIDIA and SUTD will also set up the NVIDIA-SUTD AI Lab to leverage the power of GPU-accelerated neural networks for researching new theories and algorithms for AI. The agreement also provides for internship opportunities to selected students of the lab.
“Computational power is a game changer for AI research, especially in the areas of big data analytics, robotics, machine reasoning and distributed intelligence. The DGX-1 will enable us to perform significantly more experiments in the same period of time, quickening the discovery of new theories and the design of new applications,” said Professors Shaowei Lin and Georgios Piliouras, Engineering Systems and Design, SUTD.
NVIDIA and Microsoft to accelerate AI cloud computing
NVIDIA and Microsoft are working on a new hyperscale GPU accelerator that will provide hyperscale data centres with a fast, flexible path for artificial intelligence (AI).
The new HGX-1 hyperscale GPU accelerator is an open-source design released in conjunction with Microsoft’s Project Olympus.
HGX-1 does for cloud-based AI workloads what ATX — Advanced Technology eXtended — did for PC motherboards when it was introduced more than two decades ago. It establishes an industry standard that can be rapidly and efficiently embraced to help meet surging market demand.
New Jetson doubles performance
The newly-announced NVIDIA Jetson TX2, a credit card-sized platform that delivers artificial intelligence (AI) computing at the edge, opens the door to powerfully intelligent factory robots, commercial drones and smart cameras for AI cities. Jetson […]
RIKEN turns to NVIDIA supercomputer for deep learning research
RIKEN, Japan’s largest comprehensive research institution, will have a new supercomputer for deep learning research in April. Built by Fujitsu using 24 NVIDIA DGX-1 AI systems, the new machine will accelerate the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to […]
A typo error causes 4-hour outage
It’s amazing how a typo error can wreak havoc to a massive network. On Tuesday, thousands of websites using Amazon’s AWS cloud computing service were disrupted with broken links and partial functionality. And the cause is […]
Fuji Xerox HK to accelerate IoT growth
Fuji Xerox (Hong Kong) aims to ride the Internet of Things (IoT) wave with the introduction of Smart Device 2.0, which comprises three key IoT components — cloud application, big data analytics and integrated business workflow.
The new-generation mobile document management smart device consisting of hardware, software and cloud applications is designed particularly for enterprises that handle and manage excessive documents, such as financial and banking, construction and legal industries.
Smart Device 2.0 also works for enterprises and small-to-medium businesses with staff who always work on their mobile devices, because it enables the same working environment regardless of where they are. This smart device is becoming a workplace necessity that streamline workflow; employees are no longer bound by geographical restrictions and can stay connected to their office all the time, helping enterprises save time and costs, and better use their resources.
Gunning for supercomputing supremacy in Japan
Tokyo Institute of Technology plans to create Japan’s fastest AI supercomputer, which is will deliver more than twice the performance of its predecessor to slide into the world’s top 10 fastest systems.
Called Tsubame 3.0, it will use Pascal-based NVIDIA P100 GPUs that are nearly three times as efficient as their predecessors, to reach an expected 12.2 petaflops of double precision performance.
Tsubame 3.0 will excel in AI computation with more than 47 PFLOPS of AI horsepower. When operated with Tsubame 2.5, it is expected to deliver 64.3 PFLOPS, making it Japan’s highest performing AI supercomputer.
Enter Pascal-based Quadro cards
NVIDIA has introduced a range of Pascal-based Quadro products that transforms desktop workstations into supercomputers with breakthrough capabilities for professional workflows across many industries.
Workflows in design, engineering and other areas are evolving rapidly to meet the exponential growth in data size and complexity that comes with photorealism, virtual reality and deep learning technologies.
To tap into these opportunities, the new NVIDIA Quadro Pascal-based lineup – the GP100, P4000, P2000, P1000, P600, and P400 – provides an enterprise-grade visual computing platform that streamlines design and simulation workflows with up to twice the performance of the previous generation, and ultra-fast memory.
Public cloud service in mature APAC region to hit US$10b in 2017
The public cloud services market in the mature Asia-Pacific (APAC) region — Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea — is forecast to grow 17.7 percent in 2017 to total US$10 billion, up from US$8.5 billion in 2016, according to Gartner.
By 2019, Gartner predicts that total public cloud services spending in these countries will rise to US$13.6 billion.
Public cloud services are shared, meterable, elastic and scalable multi-tenanted IT offerings delivered as a subscription-based service to external customers using internet technologies.
1 in 5 user interaction with smartphone will be via VPAs in 2019
Advances in various technologies will drive users to interact with their smartphones in more intuitive ways, said Gartner. It expect that, by 2019, 20 percent of all user interactions with the smartphone will take place via virtual personal assistants (VPAs).
“The role of interactions will intensify through the growing popularity of VPAs among smartphone users and conversations made with smart machines,” said Annette Zimmermann, Research Director of Gartner.
Gartner’s annual mobile apps survey conducted in Q4 among 3,021 consumers across three countries (US, UK and China) found that 42 percent of respondents in the US and 32 percent in the UK used VPAs on their smartphones in the last three months. More than 37 percent of respondents (average across US and UK) used a VPA at least one or more times a day.
SMU uses NVIDIA DGX-1 supercomputer for food recognition project
Singapore is renowned as a food paradise. And with so many mouth-watering dishes to pick from, sometimes even locals have difficulty identifying a specific dish.
Singapore Management University (SMU) is working on a food artificial intelligence (AI) application that is calling on a supercomputer to help with recognising the local dishes to achieve smart food consumption and healthy lifestyle.
The project, developed as part of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative, requires the analysis of a large number of food photos.
Fuji Xerox Hong Kong announces Smart Device 2.0
Fuji Xerox (Hong Kong) has launched Smart Device 2.0, a new document management smart device that lets businesses achieve smoother workflow as well as higher operational efficiency and productivity by 25 percent. It also helps companies address information technology challenges in a comprehensive manner.
Smart Work Gateway is a brand-new concept that swiftly interconnects cloud network, Smart Device 2.0 and user’s personal mobile device. Office employees can enjoy unprecedented convenience of connecting to their workplace anytime, anywhere. Work is no longer bounded by time or place.
“The all-new Smart Device 2.0, empowered by Smart Work Gateway, truly redefines the ‘smart workplace’ with user-centric and intuitive features, enabling enterprises to not only work smarter, but also build competitive edge and sustainable growth,” said Herbert Hui, Managing Director, Fuji Xerox (Hong Kong) (above).
As the next generation of Smart Device, the Smart Device 2.0 is analytics enabled, cloud enabled and business process enabled – all without the need for server support. Along with high scanning and printing speed, the redesigned multi-functional smart device features a brand-new Super EA-Eco Toner that delivers unrivaled print quality across large printing volumes, ensuring collateral produced will simultaneously achieve consistent quality, higher productivity and cost optimisation.
NVIDIA DGX SATURNV ranked most efficient supercomputer
NVIDIA’s new DGX SATURNV supercomputer is ranked the world’s most efficient — and 28th fastest overall — on the latest Top500 list of supercomputers.
Powered by new Tesla P100 GPUs, it delivers 9.46 gigaflops/watt — a 42 percent improvement from the 6.67 gigaflops/watt delivered by the most efficient machine on the Top500 list released last June.
Compared with a supercomputer of similar performance, the Camphore 2 system, which is powered by Xeon Phi Knights Landing, SATURNV is 2.3x more energy efficient.hat efficiency is key to building machines capable of reaching exascale speeds — that’s 1 quintillion, or 1 billion billion, floating-point operations per second. Such a machine could help design efficient new combustion engines, model clean-burning fusion reactors, and achieve new breakthroughs in medical research.
Worldwide services market to cross US$1 trillion mark by 2018
Global IT services and business services revenues are expected to cross the US$1 trillion mark for the first time in 2018, according to IDC.
Worldwide services spending totals for 2016 are expected to stay within the US$900 billion range and by 2020 expected to near US$1.1 trillion.
With more than US$100 million worth of spending each this year, the largest services markets will be key horizontal business process outsourcing (BPO) and systems integration services, which will also generate the largest revenue pools over the 2016-2020 forecast period. Business Consulting Services is forecast to outpace both markets in terms of growth.
Alibaba Cloud rises 128% in Q3
Alibaba Cloud has outpaced cloud service provider leaders with growth of 128 percent to reach US$221 million in Q3. However, AWS increased its lead, accounting for 32.2 percent of total spend, followed by Microsoft Azure with 17.3 percent and Google Cloud with 7.6percent, according to Canalys. Both Microsoft (up 115.6 percent) and Google (up 79.6 percent) grew faster than Amazon.
Global cloud infrastructure services expenditure increased 53.1 percent year on year to reach US$10 billion for the first time in Q.
“Alibaba has established itself as the largest e-commerce business in China and is starting to dominate the provision of cloud infrastructure services in the country,” said Daniel Liu, Research Analyst of Canalys.
Fuji Xerox launches next-generation printers in Hong Kong
Fuji Xerox (Hong Kong) has introduced three printers — DocuPrint CP315 dw and CM315 z colour printers and the DocuPrint P365 d monochrome laser printer.
Designed for small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), they offer high-performance print technology, outstanding usability and flexibility, and features to reduce their impact on the environment.
“We are thrilled to introduce the DocuPrint C315 series and DocuPrint P365 d, which offer a host of new technology, productivity and cost-saving features for SMEs. Designed with the needs of SMEs in mind, the DocuPrint C315 series leverages Fuji Xerox’s award-winning CCSLED technology and includes a new Super-EA ECO toner to deliver unrivaled print quality in a small, stylish footprint. Meanwhile, with features that mimic those of large enterprise printers, DocuPrint P365 d provides the best of both worlds to ensure lower running costs and efficiency are prioritised,” said Lee Cheung, Director, Printer Channels, Fuji Xerox (Hong Kong) Limited.
Gearing up for the next industrial revolution
By Edward Lim
It’s been a long time coming but the next industrial evolution, dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution is nearly, if not already here.
Each revolution since the first led by water and steam power used to mechanise production in 1784 has been driven by technology in various forms. The Second Industrial Revolution leveraged electric power for mass production while the Third Industrial Revolution used electronics and information technology to automate production.
The next revolution builds on an increasingly digital economy and the fusion of various technologies, including the Internet, which is shaping the way people live, work, play, and relate to one another.
NVIDIA unleashes palm-sized AI computer for autonomous vehicles
NVIDIA has unveiled a palm-sized, energy-efficient artificial intelligence (AI) computer that car makers can use to power automated and autonomous vehicles for driving and mapping.
The new single-processor configuration of the NVIDIA DRIVE PX 2 AI computing platform for AutoCruise functions — which include highway automated driving and HD mapping — consumes just 10 watts of power and enables vehicles to use deep neural networks to process data from multiple cameras and sensors. It will be deployed by China’s Baidu as the in-vehicle car computer for its self-driving cloud-to-car system.
DRIVE PX 2 enables car makers and their tier 1 suppliers to accelerate production of automated and autonomous vehicles. A car using the small form-factor DRIVE PX 2 for AutoCruise can understand in real time what is happening around it, precisely locate itself on an HD map and plan a safe path forward.
Baidu and NVIDIA team up on self-driving car
Baidu and NVIDIA are partnering to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to create a cloud-to-car autonomous car platform for Chinese and global car makers. The partnership combines Baidu’s cloud platform and mapping technology with NVIDIA’s self-driving computing platform to develop solutions for HD maps, Level 3 autonomous vehicle control and automated parking.
Baidu CEO Robin Li and NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced the collaboration at Baidu World Conference in Beijing yesterday.
“We’re going to bring together the technical capabilities and the expertise in AI and the scale of two world-class AI companies to build the self-driving car architecture from end-to-end, from top-to-bottom, from the cloud to the car,” said Huang .
3D printing market to cross US$35b in 2020
3D printing continues to gain traction globally and the market is expected to more than double to reach US$35.4 billion in 2020, according to IDC.
While 3D printers and materials will represent nearly half the total worldwide revenues throughout the IDC forecast, software and related services will also experience significant growth.
Revenues for computer-aided design (CAD) software are forecast to triple over the five-year forecast period while the market for on-demand parts services will nearly match this growth. The gains in both software and on-demand parts printing are being driven by the rapidly expanding use of 3D printing for design prototyping and products that require a high degree of customization in non-traditional environments.
Worldwide semiconductor spending to dip 0.7% in 2016
Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is expected to slide 0.7 percent in 2016, to US$64.3 billion, according to Gartner. This is up from the estimated 2 percent decline in Gartner’s previous quarterly forecast.
“Economic instability, inventory excess, weak demand for PC’s, tablets, and mobile products in the past three years has caused slow growth for the semiconductor industry. This slowdown in electronic product demand has driven semiconductor device manufacturers to be conservative in increasing production,” said David Christensen, Senior Research Analyst of Gartner.
“Looking ahead, it appears the second half of 2016 may see improved demand. However, following Brexit, semiconductor inventory levels may rise in the third and fourth quarters, which could lead to reduced production volumes,” he added.
Mastercard sports new logo
Mastercard has unveiled a new brand identity and logo to be aligned with its position as a forward-thinking, human-centred technology company. “To thrive in this new digital world where business moves faster than ever, we want […]
Enterprises driving AR market
Pokemon Go is taking the world by storm with its use of augmented reality (AR). The craze has received widespread publicity across the world as hordes of people go around in search of Pokemon using their mobile devices.
AR is also set to leave footprint in the enterprise market. ABI Research forecasts that AR in enterprise will explode over the next five years, as the technology will add functionality to existing workforces that was not previously possible, with remote assistance to be the primary use case.
Combined with increased safety and efficiency, this will drive investors and project managers to explore AR with smart glasses applications in the healthcare, industry, and government market segments forecast to hit 27 million shipments by 2021.
Security software market up 3.7% in 2015
Worldwide security software revenue hit US$22.1 billion in 2015, a 3.7 percent increase in from 2014, according to Gartner.
Security information and event management (SIEM) remained the fastest-growing segment in 2015, with 15.8 percent growth, while consumer security software showed the sharpest decline at 5.9 percent year on year.
In 2015, the top five vendors together accounted for 37.6 percent of the security software revenue market share, down 3.1 percentage points from 2014. These vendors also displayed a collective decline of 4.2 percent in 2015, while the rest of the market (Others) grew strongly at 9.2 percent year on year.
Worldwide IT spending to be flat in 2016
Worldwide IT spending is forecast to be flat in 2016, totaling US$3.41 trillion, according to Gartner, Inc. This is up from last quarter’s forecast of negative 0.5 percent growth. The change in the forecast is mainly due to currency fluctuations.
“The current Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast assumes that the UK would not exit the European Union. With the UK’s exit, there will likely be an erosion in business confidence and price increases which will impact UK, Western Europe and worldwide IT spending,” said John-David Lovelock, Research Vice President of Gartner.
While the UK has embarked on a process to change, that change is yet to be defined. The “leave” vote will quickly affect IT spending in the UK and in Europe while other changes will take longer. Staff may be the largest immediate issue. The long-term uncertainty in work status will make the UK less attractive to new foreign workers. Retaining current non-UK staff and having less access to qualified new hires from abroad will impair UK IT Departments.
China’s world’s fastest supercomputer built without US chips
China has continued its lead in the race for the world’s fastest supercomputer with the Sunway TaihuLight, whose Linpack mark of 93 petaflops outperforms the former TOP500 champ, Tianhe-2, by a factor of three. What’s more remarkable is […]
NTT Com Asia names new C-team
Hong Kong-based NTT Com Asia, the East Asia headquarters of NTT Communications, has named Hideaki Ozaki as President and CEO, Theodoric Chan as Chief Commercial Officer and Taylor Man as Chief Technology Officer. The three […]
India public cloud services to hit US$1.26b in 2016
The public cloud services market in India is projected to grow 30.4 percent in 2016 to hit US$1.26 billion, according to Gartner.
The highest growth will come from cloud system infrastructure services (infrastructure as a service [IaaS]), which is projected to grow 32.5 percent in 2016, with platform as a service (PaaS) projected to grow 31.7 percent.
“We are witnessing a shift from legacy IT services to cloud-based services. Cloud services are growing due to organizations pursuing a digital business strategy,” said Sid Nag, Research Director of Gartner.
Half of CEOs expects substantial digital transformation in their industries
Despite a slowing global economy, CEOs are still making business growth their top priority in 2016, according to a Gartner survey. After growth (54 percent), the second and third business priorities are customers (31 percent) and workforce (27 percent).
The Gartner CEO and senior business executive survey of 400 senior business leaders in user organisations worldwide was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2015, asking questions about 2016/2017. Most responding organisations were those with annual revenue of US$1 billion or more. The survey results show that while business conditions are challenging, CEOs remain confident enough to sanction strategic investments, particularly when it comes to digital business transformation.
“The big rise of explicit mentions of the word ‘customer’ was very noticeable in the results of this year’s survey, “CEOs seem to be concerned about improving customer service, relationship and satisfaction levels. At the same time, CEOs have become much more concerned about employee issues than a couple of years ago. The emphasis is as much on benefits, retention and training of mainstream staff. It is not constrained only to senior grade ‘talent’ issues,” said Mark Raskino, Vice President and Gartner Fellow.
Alibaba to take US$1b stake in Lazada
Leading e-commerce giant Alibaba has announced that it would pay US$1 billion for a controlling stake in Singapore startup Lazada, which has e-commerce operations across Southeast Asia. Established by Rocket Internet in 2011, Lazada is a popular […]
PC shipment down 9.6% in Q1
Worldwide PC shipment shed 9.6 percent to 64.8 million in Q1, according to Gartner. This was the sixth consecutive quarter of PC shipment declines, and the first time since 2007 that shipment volume fell below 65 million units.
In the Asia-Pacific, PC shipment dropped 5.1 percent to 23.3 million units. The ongoing fragile Chinese economy and weak global demand continued to dampen consumer sentiment in the region.
With high PC penetration in the major cities, it was a challenge to invoke PC replacements on the appeal of new technology. The PC life cycle is lengthening as many consumers are waiting until their PC breaks down before purchasing a new one.
IBM and Mastercard to collaborate on market analytics for smaller merchants
IBM and MasterCard are partnering to offer smaller merchants real-time, analytics-based market insights on revenue, market share, customer demographics and competitors in a particular location and across multiple locations.
The solution integrates IBM Watson Analytics with insights based on aggregated and anonymised MasterCard transaction data through MasterCard Advisors Local Market Intelligence (LMI).
According to MasterCard’s latest research, more than seven out of 10 smaller businesses in Asia-Pacific expect higher business costs in 2016. With this enhanced analytical platform powered by MasterCard Advisors and IBM, merchants will hence be better equipped to make informed decisions that lower costs based on a deeper knowledge of their business’ financial strengths and pitfalls.
Pascal-based NVIDIA Tesla P100 delivers 12 times performance of previous generation accelerator
NVIDIA has introduced the NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU, an advanced hyperscale data centre accelerator that can enable a new class of servers that can deliver the performance of hundreds of CPU server nodes.
Today’s data centres process large numbers of transactional workloads, such as web services. But they are inefficient at next-generation artificial intelligence and scientific applications, which require ultra-efficient, lightning-fast server nodes.
Based on the new NVIDIA Pascal GPU architecture, the Tesla P100 provides the performance and efficiency needed to power the computationally demanding applications. It delivers over a 12x increase in neural network training performance compared with a previous-generation NVIDIA Maxwell-based solution.
NVIDIA unveils world’s first deep learning supercomputer
At his opening keynote address at GTC in San Jose, Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of NVIDIA made a slew of announcements, including the world’s first deep learning supercomputer to meet the unlimited computing demands of artificial intelligence (AI).
As the first system designed specifically for deep learning, the NVIDIA DGX-1 comes fully integrated with hardware, deep learning software and development tools for quick, easy deployment. It is a turnkey system that contains a new generation of GPU accelerators, delivering the equivalent throughput of 250 x86 servers.
The DGX-1 deep learning system enables researchers and data scientists to easily harness the power of GPU-accelerated computing to create a new class of intelligent machines that learn, see and perceive the world as humans do. It delivers unprecedented levels of computing power to drive next-generation AI applications, allowing researchers to dramatically reduce the time to train larger, more sophisticated deep neural networks.
Global semiconductor market drops 2.3 percent in 2015
Worldwide semiconductor revenue declined 2.3 percent to US$334.8 billion in 2015, according to final results by Gartner.
The combined revenue of the top 25 semiconductor vendors fell by 0.5 percent during 2015. This was a better performance than the rest of the market, however, which saw a 6.9 percent revenue decline. The top 25 vendors accounted for 73.5 percent of the market, down slightly from 74 percent in 2014.
“The worldwide semiconductor market declined in 2015 as slowing demand for key applications combined with strong currency fluctuations to subdue the market. 2015 saw a mixed performance by the different device categories, unlike 2014 when all categories posted positive growth. Non-optical sensors performed best due to increased usage of fingerprint sensors in smartphones, while discretes saw the strongest decline due to a mix of weak demand and currency issues,” said Andrew Norwood, Research Vice President of Gartner.
Clock ticking for Challenger flagship store
A sale offering products at up to 80 percent off will certainly catch the eye. But, it could also bring a tear or two to the generations that have frequented Challenger Technologies’ megastore at Funan DigitaLife […]
APAC bucks thin and terminal client down trend
The economic gloom has hit the global enterprise client device market comprising thin and terminal clients. The market was down 6.8 percent in Q4, bringing 2015 decline to 6.9 percent, according to IDC.
This was due to project cutback or delay in the face of a faltering economic outlook and reduced public budgets.
The Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan) provided the only bright spark in the downturn, growing just over 10 percent in 2015.
PC revival! Chromebooks and ultraportable PCs to lead charge
The personal computer (PC) is still alive and breathing. According to ABI Research, 163 million notebook PCs shipped globally in 2015.
The majority were laptops, which constituted nearly 80 percent of the category. The data suggests that despite a floating myth speculating that it will only be a matter of time before PCs meet their demise, the market is still going strong and shows no sign of slowing down in the immediate future.
“Industry experts greatly exaggerated the death of the PC. The platform is continuing to evolve its designs to provide flexibility for productivity purposes, while also adapting its shape to support tablet-like, touch applications. Chromebooks and ultraportable PCs will continue to drive the most growth within the notebook PC market,” said Jeff Orr, Research Director of ABI Research.
Monash University launches M3 to accelerate research
Monash University is taking research to another level with the launch of M3, the third-generation supercomputer available through the MASSIVE (Multi-modal Australian ScienceS Imaging and Visualisation Environment) facility.
Powered by ultra-high-performance NVIDIA Tesla K80 GPU accelerators, M3 will provide new simulation and real-time data processing capabilities to a wide selection of Australian researchers.
“Our collaboration with NVIDIA will take Monash research to new heights. By coupling some of Australia’s best researchers with NVIDIA’s accelerated computing technology we’re going to see some incredible impact. Our scientists will produce code that runs faster, but more significantly, their focus on deep learning algorithms will produce outcomes that are smarter,” said Professor Ian Smith, Vice Provost (Research and Research Infrastructure), Monash University.
Oil gloom, data centre bloom
Oversupply of oil in the global economy is set to accelerate data centre investment, according to Canalys, which forecasted that the large data centre segment will grow eight percent in 2016 as enterprises and service providers become more ambitious with the size of their facilities.
Oil prices have declined more than 70 percent since mid-2014, and will remain low as production ramps up across the US and Middle East. Data centres, with their monolithic energy consumption, will benefit from cheaper electricity as wholesale gas prices decline. Investment will focus on larger facilities, as energy becomes less of a constraint on operating costs.
Cheaper oil will accelerate a market that is already growing. Pre-eminent cloud service providers have already reacted to data sovereignty concerns by investing in the expansion of their global cloud footprint. This will continue and industry standard servers, network security and virtualisation technologies will become key growth categories. Incumbent data centre infrastructure vendors will pivot their focus towards high-end large and hyperscale facilities, but will face stiff competition from cheaper ODM alternatives.
Worldwide IT spending to remain flat this year
The global economy is hitting IT spending, with Gartner predicting just a 0.6 percent increase over 2015 spending of US$3.52 trillion.
2015 saw the largest US dollar drop in IT spending since Gartner began tracking IT spending. US$216b less was spent on IT in 2015 than in 2014 and 2014 spending levels won’t be surpassed until 2019.
“The rising US dollar is the villain behind 2015 results. US multinationals’ revenue faced currency headwinds in 2015. However, in 2016 those headwinds go away and they can expect an additional five percent growth,” said John-David Lovelock, Research Vice President of Gartner.
Semiconductor market drops 1.9% in 2015
Worldwide semiconductor revenue was US$333.7 billion in 2015, a 1.9 percent decrease from 2014 revenue of US$340.3 billion, according to Gartner.
The top 25 semiconductor vendors’ combined revenue increased 0.2 percent, which was more than the overall industry’s growth. They also accounted for 73.2 percent of total market revenue, up from 71.7 percent in 2014.
“Weakened demand for key electronic equipment, the continuing impact of the strong dollar in some regions and elevated inventory are to blame for the decline in the market in 2015,” said Sergis Mushell, Research Director of Gartner.
NVIDIA adds AI and supercomputing prowess to driverless cars
The new NVIDIA DRIVE PX 2 is set to give driverless cars a major boost.
Touted at the world’s most powerful engine for in-vehicle artificial intelligence, it allows the automotive industry to use artificial intelligence (AI) to tackle the complexities inherent in autonomous driving. NVIDIA DRIVE PX2 utilises deep learning on NVIDIA’s advanced GPUs for 360-degree situational awareness around the car, to determine precisely where the car is and to compute a safe, comfortable trajectory.
“Drivers deal with an infinitely complex world. Modern artificial intelligence and GPU breakthroughs enable us to finally tackle the daunting challenges of self-driving cars,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, Co-founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “NVIDIA’s GPU is central to advances in deep learning and supercomputing. We are leveraging these to create the brain of future autonomous vehicles that will be continuously alert, and eventually achieve superhuman levels of situational awareness. Autonomous cars will bring increased safety, new convenient mobility services and even beautiful urban designs – providing a powerful force for a better future.”
Entelechy Asia 