Saturday, September 24, 2016

AT&T Project AirGig Puts mmWave Antennas Along Power Lines

AT&T is looking to deploy low-cost plastic antennas along medium-voltage power lines as a means of propagating millimeter wave (mmWave) signals that can be used for 4G LTE and 5G multi-gigabit mobile and fixed deployments.

Project AirGig, which originates out of AT&T Labs, aims to deliver ultra-fast broadband connectivity of license-free spectrum.  Project AirGig is expected to enter field trials in 2017.

Significantly, there’s no direct electrical connection to the power line required and it has the potential of multi-gigabit speeds in urban, rural and underserved parts of the world.

The company says this makes the AirGig technology interesting as a means to deliver last-mile access without any new fiber-to-the-home.  It is flexible enough to be configured with small cells or distributed antenna systems. It does not require the construction of new towers or laying new cables in the ground. Advantages include low-cost hardware, low deployment costs, and high signal quality.
AT&T points out that Project AirGig could also be a benefit to utility companies, enabling a variety of smart-grid applications.

“Project AirGig has tremendous potential to transform internet access globally – well beyond our current broadband footprint and not just in the United States,” said John Donovan, chief strategy officer and group president, Technology and Operations, AT&T. “The results we’ve seen from our outdoor labs testing have been encouraging, especially as you think about where we’re heading in a 5G world. To that end, we’re looking at the right global location to trial this new technology next year.”

http://www.att.com


Azure Batch Shipyard Toolkit Automates Docker

Microsoft's Azure Big Compute team released version 1.0.0 of its Batch Shipyard toolkit, which enables easy deployment of batch-style Dockerized workloads to Azure Batch compute pools.

The toolkit makes it possible to run parallel jobs in the cloud without having to manage the infrastructure. Applications include parametric sweeps, Deep Learning training with NVIDIA GPUs, and simulations using MPI and InfiniBand, whether the containerized jobs are run on a single machine or hundreds or even thousands of machines.

Some highlighted features:
  • Automated Docker Host Engine installation tuned for Azure Batch compute nodes
  • Automated deployment of required Docker images to compute nodes
  • Accelerated Docker image deployment at scale to compute pools consisting of a large number of VMs via private peer-to-peer distribution of Docker images among the compute nodes
  • Automated Docker Private Registry instance creation on compute nodes with Docker images backed to Azure Storage if specified
  • Automatic shared data volume support for:
  • Azure File Docker Volume Driver installation and share setup for SMB/CIFS backed to Azure Storage if specified
  • GlusterFS distributed network file system installation and setup if specified

More...

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/deep-learning-simulation-and-hpc-applications-with-docker-and-azure-batch/

Microsoft Azure Activates in Germany with T-Systems

Microsoft Azure is now generally available in Germany via new data centers in Magdeburg and Frankfurt that are managed under the control of a data trustee, T-Systems International.

Microsoft said its commercial cloud services in these data centers adhere to German data handling regulations and give customers additional choices of how and where data is processed.

Microsoft now has announced 34 Azure regions, and Azure is available in 30 regions around the world.

http://www.microsoft.com



Microsoft Activates Azure from UK Data Centers


Microsoft announced the availability of its Azure cloud services and Office 365 from multiple data centers in the UK. Microsoft has now announced 34 Azure regions around the world with 28 generally available today – more than any other major cloud provider. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-azure-now-available