Apple's new M2 Ultra leverages its UltraFusion silicon interposer

Apple introduced its flagship M2 Ultra system on a chip (SoC) built using a second-generation 5-nanometer process and boasting 134 billion transistors — 20 billion more than M1 Ultra.

The M2 Ultra chip leverages Apple’s UltraFusion® silicon interposer technology to connect the die of two M2 Max chips. The design connects the dies with more than 10,000 signals, providing over 2.5TB/s of low-latency interprocessor bandwidth. 

The M2 Ultra supports up to 192GB of unified memory capacity with 800GB/s of memory bandwidth — twice that of M2 Max. The GPU can be configured with 60 or 76 next-generation cores. The Neural Engine features 32 cores delivering 31.6 trillion operations per second.

Apple says the M2 Ultra CPU is 20 percent faster than M1 Ultra, the GPU is up to 30 percent faster, and the Neural Engine is up to 40 percent faster.

Read More

Intel shows PowerVia chip backside power delivery

Intel announced the first implementation of its PowerVia backside power delivery technology in a product-like test chip.

PowerVia solves the growing issue of interconnect bottlenecks in area scaling by moving power routing to the backside of a wafer.

Intel said PowerVia was tested on its own internal test node to debug and ensure good functionality of the technology before its integration with RibbonFET in Intel 20A. After fabrication and testing on a silicon test chip, PowerVia was confirmed to bring a remarkably efficient use of chip resources with greater than 90% cell utilization and major transistor scaling, enabling chip designers to achieve performance and efficiency gains in their products.

Intel plans to introduce PowerVia on the Intel 20A process node in the first half of 2024.

“PowerVia is a major milestone in our aggressive ‘five nodes in four years’ strategy and on our path to achieving a trillion transistors in a package in 2030. Using a trial process node and subsequent test chip enabled us to de-risk backside power for our leading process nodes, placing Intel a node ahead of competitors in bringing backside power delivery to market,”  states Ben Sell, Intel vice president of Technology Development.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/powervia-intel-achieves-chipmaking-breakthrough.html#gs.zm1e02

Read More

Charter to deploy Nokia CBRS RAN to offload from leased network

Charter Communications will deploy Nokia’s AirScale equipment portfolio, including 5G RAN, to increase network capacity to Spectrum Mobile customers in its trial markets in the United States. The deployment will offload traffic from its leased mobile network.

This is the first win for Nokia in the Multiple System Operator (MSO) space. Charter will deploy Nokia’s 5G RAN products, including strand mounted radios for CBRS, baseband units, and a newly developed 5G CBRS Strand Mount Small Cells All-in-One portfolio on the company’s assets, which will help Charter continue to deliver mobile traffic in strategic locations across its 41-state footprint while providing customers with the best possible 5G service experience.

 

Charter’s Spectrum Mobile, which currently has 6 million customer lines as of Q12023, claims to be the fastest growing mobile provider in the United States.

Shaun McCarthy, President of North America Sales at Nokia, said: “This news builds on our more than 20-year relationship working with Charter to enhance its network. We are excited to expand its current trial to additional select metropolitan markets in the US, enabling an enhanced user experience for Spectrum Mobile subscribers. This win strengthens Nokia’s leadership position in the MSO space for 5G wireless deployments.”

https://ir.charter.com/static-files/3943ccd3-dd07-4dfa-9946-a9afd1bef557

• Charter Communications, the second largest U.S. cable operator, launched its Spectrum Mobile service in July 2018 as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) using Verizon’s nationwide network.

Read More

Adva Network Security and Quantum Optics demo QKD

Adva Network Security and Quantum Optics Jena demonstrated entanglement-based quantum key distribution (QKD) technology to establish a secure optical communication channel between data centers owned and operated by the Thüringer Landesrechenzentrum (TLRZ), the IT service provider for the state’s administration in Thuringia. 

Adva Network Security said that by delivering quantum-secured keys to the encryptor of the high-bitrate optical channel, the team was able to show how data traffic could resist quantum attacks on the link between the data centers. The demo represents a significant leap forward for quantum-safe communications made in Germany and is a crucial step toward bolstering critical infrastructure security to protect against the real and impending threat quantum computers pose to private data.

The field trial leveraged Quantum Optics Jena’s entanglement-based QKD technology and Adva Network Security’s ConnectGuard Layer 1 technology to demonstrate a consistent quantum-secure connection between TLRZ data centers. Using the unique properties of quantum entanglement, the system generates a secure method for key exchange impervious to data interception. During one day of operation, the system sends over 20 billion entangled photons and creates 11.84 million secure bits to generate more than 46,000 256-bit keys for encryption services like Adva Network Security’s Layer 1 encryption. The keys generated by the QKD system will always remain secure, even if a potential attacker attempts to interfere with or eavesdrop on the entangled quantum states during transmission. Adva Network Security’s Layer 1 encryption technology ensures comprehensive protection for all network layers and operates with line speeds of 10Gbit/s or 100Gbit/s.

“Quantum computers may soon render traditional encryption methods obsolete, making safeguarding sensitive data an urgent priority for governments the world over,” said Kevin Füchsel, CEO at Quantum Optics Jena. “With our field trial, we’re demonstrating just how effective our innovative entanglement-based QKD system, ELVIS, is at securing data in transit. What’s more, Adva Network Security’s ConnectGuard™ encryption technology enables our solution to function effectively over DCI links, significantly enhancing data integrity for sectors including government, defense, healthcare and financial services. Our combined product offering made in Germany is the world’s most mature and robust solution for securing optical communications.”

“As quantum computer technology evolves, vast amounts of currently unbreakable encrypted information will become vulnerable to hackers,” noted Michael Roth, GM of Adva Network Security. “That’s why this trial is so crucial. Working together with Quantum Optics Jena, we’ve demonstrated how our technology can be embedded within communications networks to secure the most highly-sensitive data of financial institutions, defense organizations, healthcare and many other sectors. Our standardized key exchange protocol assured seamless integration with the QKD technology from Quantum Optics Jena, showing how easy it is to upgrade our security solution to QKD and highlighting the future-proof nature of our products.”

https://www.advasecurity.com

Read More

GTT boosts its security offerings

GTT Communications is rolling out the following enhancements to its fully managed cloud-and premise-based cybersecurity service offerings for enterprises: 

• 
  GTT MDR: New heightened service-level agreement (SLA) for GTT’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR), assuring enterprises with 24/7 threat monitoring and ongoing assurance that investigations will take place within 15 minutes. The service combines Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) technology with human intelligence to provide enterprises with 24/7 threat monitoring and ongoing assurance that investigations will take place within 15 minutes. 
• GTT DDoS Mitigation: New standard service option for enterprises with dedicated DDoS Mitigation infrastructure to augment and uplift their network security to help protect against the effects of large-scale/complex attacks. The service detects DDoS attacks targeting customers’ networks and directs internet traffic to the closest of GTT’s 10 global DDoS scrubbing centers, where any malicious traffic is dropped while legitimate traffic is allowed to flow unimpeded to its destination with little to no added latency.

“As cyberthreats continue to grow in scale and complexity, managed and professional services can help enterprises both overcome the cyber skills gap and strike the right balance between risk management, cost and performance,” said Todd Kiehn, senior vice president of Strategy & Product, GTT. “We recognize that flexibility and speed are key to how enterprises can build out successful and adaptable network security strategies. Our new heightened SLA for MDR ensures customers that any security issues triggering an alert are investigated within 15 minutes to rapidly identify potential threats.”

https://www.gtt.net

Read More