A new player has entered the machine learning arena. While big players such as Google, Intel and NVIDIA have been slugging it out, Amazon has thrown its hat into the ring with its newly-launched Inferentia chip.
Category: Enterprise
SSMC opens S$300m clean room in Singapore

Semiconductor maker Systems on Silicon Manufacturing Company (SSMC) has opened a new S$300 million Annex 10 clean room in Singapore.
Arcadier to raise US$25m for blockchain e-commerce marketplaces
Singapore headquartered Arcadier, has launched Token Generation Event (TGE) Presale to raise US$25 million by Q3 next year for its Project ArcadierX blockchain-enhanced marketplace platform. A private sale has yielded US$1 million in investment.
NTU achieves highest Linpack score in global supercomputing competition

A six-person team from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has achieved 56.51 teraflops, the highest Linpack score — a measurement of a system’s floating point computing horsepower — in a global supercomputing competition held in conjunction with SC18 in Dallas.
Ecozen impresses at inaugural Rabobank Food Loss Challenge

Big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are not usually associated with food and agriculture but five startups have shown that such technologies can play a major role in minimising food loss. Some 1.3 billion tonnes of food are lost worldwide each year.
NVIDIA GPUs power a quarter of Top 500 supercomputers

The world’s top two supercomputers — – the US Department of Energy’s Summit, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Sierra, at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. — pack a combined total of more than 40,000 NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs, according to the latest of the Top 500 list released in conjunction with SC18.
Saba Software acquires Lumesse
Talent development solutions provider Saba Software has completed its acquisition of Lumesse, a provider of talent acquisition, talent management, and learning experience technology.
Taiwan hospital deploys NVIDIA DGX-2 for next-generation medical services
Taiwan’s Chinese Medical University Hospital (CMUH) has become the first healthcare provider in Asia to deploy and operate the NVIDIA DGX-2 AI supercomputer.
IBM in “game-changer” Red Hat acquisition
IBM has announced its US$34 billion acquisition of open source leader Red Hat. The move has been dubbed a “game-changer” by Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, who added that it changes everything about the cloud market.
Infineon gives startups a heads up with first Co-Innovation Space

Names such as Ampotech, Plunify, SHADO, and XNERGY may not ring a bell today but with a little help from Infineon, they may well become the successes of tomorrow.
Online marketplace Honestbee launches brick-and-mortar Habitat
It’s interesting how trends keep evolving. In the past decade or two, many supermarkets have opened up online stores to cater to changing consumer demands. On the other side, new companies set up online stores to challenge these traditional players. Yesterday, one of these, Honestbee, took the reverse route by setting up Habitat, its first brick-and-mortar outlet in Pasir Panjang, Singapore.
Huawei ups the ante on AI
Huawei has upped the ante with an ambitious US$140 million investment in developing one million artificial intelligence (AI) talents in three years. Under its AI Developer Enablement Programme, the China telecoms giant will work with universities and research institutions as well as partners and developers to build an ecosystem with AI resources, platforms, courses, and joint solutions to better support AI development.
Goodbye, Google Plus!

The stuff of spy movies
Supermicro has become infamous overnight following an expose by Bloomberg quoting unnamed sources. According to the report, “the attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 US companies, including Amazon and Apple, by compromising America’s technology supply chain.”
Facebook to give SEA startups a leg up
Social media giant Facebook is partnering with Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) of Singapore to give Southeast Asia startups a head start in developing data-driven technologies.
Qualcomm accuses Apple of IP theft
The legal tussle between Qualcomm and Apple has hit another level with the chipmaker accusing the smartphone giant of passing trade secrets to Intel. An earlier court battle, Qualcomm said that Apple breached an agreement for it to audit Apple’s use of Qualcomm’s source code.
Singapore launches unified payment QR code
The number of QR codes for payment is akin to the number of credit card offerings in the market — it keeps growing, making it more of a hassle than convenience for merchants and consumers. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has stepped in to solve this problem with the launch of the Singapore Quick Response (SGQR) Code.
The Weather Channel showcases realistic weather simulation
The weather wreaked havoc across the world last week with a number of hurricanes and typhoons. The Weather Channel leveraged the same technology used for computer games to create simulations that brought the impact of such weather into homes.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma walks the talk
By Edward Lim
It’s hard to let go when you’re one of the richest man in the world and leading one, if not the biggest, e-commerce company in the world. But, Jack Ma is a man of his word. A man who knows his time and a man who has shown what resilience is all about.
NVIDIA GPU Cloud supports Microsoft Azure
NVIDIA and Microsoft have announced that Microsoft Azure is now supported on the NVIDIA GPU Cloud (NGC) platform.
China wins battle for AI investments
A battle of sorts is taking place in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). It has been widely reported that China is ramping up its focus on the technology that is expected to transform businesses and industries. Numbers from ABI Research point to a swing in favour of China.
NVIDIA AI Conference keynotes: Transforming industries, creating AI infrastructure
The first NVIDIA AI Conference in Sydney on September 4 will kick off with two keynote addresses. Marc Hamilton, Vice President of Solutions Architecture and Engineering, NVIDIA, will talk about Transforming Industries With AI. Jason Humphrey (right), Head of Retail Risk, ANZ Bank, will then share on Creating the Infrastructure to Undertake Deep Learning.
Free WhatsApp backup on Google Drive
WhatsApp backup will no longer count towards Google Drive storage quota, thanks to a new agreement between the two companies.
NVIDIA and RED Digital Cinema ease 8K bottleneck
8K is the new benchmark for professional videos captured by state-of-the-art cameras but delivering that standard for editing was not quite possible until NVIDIA’s announcement this week at SIGGRAPH of the Turing architecture and the new Quadro RTX GPUs.
NVIDIA unveils Turing architecture and new Quadro products
To the uninitiated, images just look look sharper and more detailed because of improved resolution. But, there’s much more to that, one of which is ray tracing, a rendering technique used to generate an image by tracing the path of light as pixels in an image plane and simulating the effects of its encounters with virtual objects.
NetApp rolls out NVIDIA-powered NetApp ONTAP AI architecture
NetApp has introduced NetApp ONTAP AI proven architecture to simplify, accelerate and scale the data pipeline across edge, core and cloud for deep learning deployments and to help customers achieve real business impact with AI.
IBM retrenches 200 in Singapore in Mexico shift
IBM has axed reportedly at least 200 staff from its Tampines plant in Singapore. This is because the IT giant is shifting manufacturing of its IBM Power Systems to IBM Guadalajara, Mexico.
SingHealth patient database compromised in cyber attack
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was among 1.5 million patients who had their personal data stolen in the nation’s most severe cyber attack to date. Also compromised were the outpatient prescriptions of 160,000 patients.
TechnologyOne secures 5-year deal with 3 NZ government agencies

TechnologyOne has inked a five-year contract with New Zealand’s Central Agency Shared Services, under which it will provide software-as-a-service (SaaS) to the Treasury, the State Services Commission and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Outage and strike do not faze Amazon on Prime Day
Amazon Prime Day is still going strong and racking up tons of sales despite an outage that prevented some customers in North America from accessing the website and the app, and a strike by workers in Spain.