'Offensive capability': $1.3b for new cyber spies to go after hackers

Australian security agencies believe China is behind the cyber raids on all levels of government, although the Morrison government has chosen not to name the country involved.

Under the plan, Australia's chief cyber defence agency will be given $31 million to build new offensive capabilities to go after cyber attackers offshore and disrupt their activities before they have the chance to strike at Australian governments and businesses.

There will also be a new $25 million cyber threat-sharing platform, allowing industry and government to share intelligence about malicious cyber activity and block emerging threats in near real-time.

The ASD will be given new capabilities to allow the agency and Australia's major telcos to prevent malicious cyber attacks ever reaching millions of Australians by blocking known malicious websites and computer viruses more quickly.

The cyber body - which is part of the Department of Defence - will also be given $118 million to expand its data science and intelligence capabilities to identify emerging cyber threats to Australia over the next 10 years.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said malicious cyber attacks against Australia were increasing in frequency, scale and sophistication.

"The federal government's top priority is protecting our nation's economy, national security and sovereignty. Malicious cyber activity undermines that," Mr Morrison said.

"My government's record investment in our nation's cyber security will help ensure we have the tools and capabilities we need to fight back and keep Australians safe."

The added capabilities for the ASD will form part of Australia's new four-year cyber security strategy, which will be released in the next few months.

There is still more than $500 million out of the $1.35 billion funding injection yet to be announced, which is expected to be detailed in the new strategy.

The NSW government was a major target of the cyber attacks carried out in recent months, which alarmed Australian security agencies and sparked Mr Morrison to publicly warn Australians about the rise in attacks against the nation's critical infrastructure - but he stopped short of naming Beijing.

China has denied it was behind the wave of cyber attacks in Australia, saying the claims were "baseless".

The Morrison government has previously warned power stations, transport systems and industrial plants are likely to be the target of cyber attacks from state-sponsored hackers and criminal networks.

The government has recruited former US secretary of homeland security Kirstjen Nielsen to help prepare the cyber security strategy.

Defence Minister Linda Reynolds said the funding injection would have a real impact on the cyber security of all Australians.

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"The package will put our nation on the front foot in combating cyber threats and our investment in a cyber security workforce will help ensure we have the people we need to meet future cyber challenges," she said.

"For example, this package will enable ASD and Australia's major telecommunications providers to prevent malicious cyber activity from reaching millions of Australians by blocking known malicious websites and computer viruses at speed."

The ASD recruitment drive will come at a cost of $470 million over the next decade.

The nation's cyber resilience agency, the Australian Cyber Security Centre - which is a branch of the ASD - will also share in the funding.

Anthony is foreign affairs and national security correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

How To Play CYPHER Guide (VALORANT Abilities)

When the helpers need help it’s computer whiz Charles to the rescue

"I'm retired and disabled so I can't do a lot, but I know computers pretty dang well." – Charles Scott.

He asked only one favor. If I was going to write something, don't make it about him. He wasn't the story, Charles Scott said.

I tried, Charles, I really did. I must have gone through five different versions of this column, and none of them worked without you driving the car.

Gas money, I call it. That's all you're asking for, just enough to cover your gas costs driving around the Valley hooking up disconnected seniors who are veterans to the outside world. Your time is free. No charge.

Ed Reynolds, from the veteran's group Wings Over Wendy's, tells me you showed up at one of their Monday morning meetings last fall with some of your buddies from Reel Cowboys, another group I admire for all the community service work they do.

The first time I met the Reel Cowboys was at a battered women's shelter. These big, brawny men who played the bad guys in old cowboy movies were down on their hands and knees giving horsey-back rides to little kids who thought all men were mean and hit mommy.

I saw a lot of them tear up that day holding those kids in their arms, and a lot more get mad, wishing they could meet some of those abusive dads in a dark alley sometime, just for a few minutes.

You weren't a veteran and you weren't an old movie cowboy, Charles, but both groups welcomed you because they saw something special in you. A lot of heart, determination and talent.

When the coronavirus hit and everything shut down, many senior veterans were left stranded in their homes. A phone call or email on an old computer they barely knew how to operate couldn't replace face-to-face contact.

It took Ed some time to teach his older veterans how to Zoom so they could keep in touch, but many of them didn't have the web cams and updated equipment to join in. That's where you came in, Charles.

"It wasn't just Wings they couldn't connect to, it was their children and grandchildren, as well," you said. "That's what frustrated me the most. I'd go out and visit them, making sure they were on the opposite side of the room from me."

You located the problem, Charles, and it was nothing money couldn't solve. But how do you get the extra cash when these vets were already living on a tight budget, just like you? You started a GoFundMe account before going to bed one night, and woke up the next morning to find nearly $500 already in it.

You took the money to buy web cams for half a dozen old vets, and upgrade their computers, which were old and slow. You spent four hours explaining everything they had to do, and made sure they got it right.

Then, you gave them the bill for your services. Ten bucks for three gallons of gas.

"Much of the success of our Zoom meetings is directly attributed to Charles," Ed said.

He knows it's tough for you to get around at 56 without a cane to lean on. He's seen the pain in your face. All those years of heavy lifting for a moving van company ruined your back and knees, and caused permanent damage. That's when you turned to computers, and began using your mind, not your brawn.

When I called you earlier this week, you were getting ready to shut down the GoFundMe account because you had met your goal. But why stop at only seniors who are veterans, I asked? Why not open it to all seniors on tight budgets who can't afford a computer whiz to help them out?

That's when you decided to keep it open a while longer until it reaches $1,000, enough to buy web cams for more than 20 seniors, first come, first serve. Where it goes from there, who knows?

You're a breath of fresh air, Charles, and I wish I could have granted you that favor, but if I did this column wouldn't have been written because you're the story.

There was just no other way to look at it. You're driving this car. For gas money.

The link to the GoFundMe account is gf.me/u/x9pst6.

To reach Charles, send an email to pcinfoman@gmail.com.

Dennis McCarthy's column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.

Community Helpers for Kids | Jobs & Occupations for Preschool and Kindergarten | Kids Academy

Patricia Moore on having a bird’s-eye view of part of Ireland’s space sector

Patricia Moore is the CTO of Dublin-based space-related ICT consultancy company Mindseed, having previously worked in DCU.

Mindseed specialises in space-related technologies, particularly those linking space and ground systems. Prior to joining as the company's CTO, Patricia Moore was an assistant professor with the School of Electronic Engineering at Dublin City University and a researcher with the Insight Centre for Data Analytics and the Vision Systems Group at the University.

Tell me about your own role and your responsibilities in driving tech strategy?

My role is to work with client companies to develop viable business and technology roadmaps in order to pursue market opportunities in the ICT sector. With expertise in telecommunications, satellite system integration, space technology, IoT, computer vision, AI, and business digitisation, Mindseed delivers into a very diverse set of technology roadmaps.

Traditionally, the space sector has been associated with significant barriers to entry, but space technology is becoming increasingly democratised. This is creating a wealth of opportunities for individuals and organisations. One of my key roles involves making space-based products and services like satellite navigation, earth observation and satellite communication more accessible to our clients.

My goal is to open doors to opportunities for innovation in ground-segment and downstream services. Once a viable roadmap and commercial opportunity has been established, I work with clients to secure funding, assess potential markets, build prototypical design models, and develop full-scale commercial technology implementations.

Are you spearheading any major product/IT initiatives you can tell us about?

I am passionate about developing and supporting technology roadmaps that seek to address key societal and environmental challenges. Currently I am working on a number of ambitious projects relating to sustainability, climate change, clean water and sanitation, and disease control.

Perhaps the most topical of these projects is a major Smart Sanitation project, with Woodco Renewable Energy, funded by the European Space Agency. As we have seen with the Covid-19 pandemic, when it comes to disease, early detection, treatment and community response are all vital to limiting the impact on an individual's health and preventing outbreaks within a community.

'Achieving real-time detection is somewhat of a "holy grail" for researchers'– PATRICIA MOORE

An area that is now increasingly under the spotlight is how digital transformation can support efforts in disease management. Through equipping sanitation systems and environs with smart sensors, we can quickly and autonomously detect disease and monitor environmental and societal transmission factors. The data collected can be used to provide evidence-based decision support for those tasked with managing the spread of disease, while predictive health analytics can support early warning systems.

A particularly exciting element of the Smart Sanitation system is our efforts to develop a real-time pathogen detection capability for deployment in wastewater. Wastewater analysis can significantly contribute to our understanding of the incidence and risk of disease in populations, caused by bacteria, viruses and other pathogens related to human sanitation.

By way of example, RNA traces of the coronavirus, from the faeces of infected individuals, were detected in wastewater in the Netherlands even before the first COVID-19 patients appeared. Early detection is particularly important where asymptomatic transmission appears to be so prevalent. Achieving real-time detection is somewhat of a 'holy grail' for researchers in this area.

How big is your team? Do you outsource where possible?

At Mindseed, we have a small in-house team with complementary skillsets and outsource as necessary. As a consultant, I work in partnership with our client companies and embed with their domain experts, filling their ICT gap as needed.

What are your thoughts on digital transformation and how are you addressing it?

Digital transformation is really at the heart of what Mindseed as a company does. Digital transformation is no longer a 'nice-to-have' but a 'must-have' for modern business, and I see a growing recognition of that. At Mindseed, we have a keen appreciation that a digital transformation strategy will look different for every company. It is not something that can be tied down. Rather, it is a continuous business-specific journey that requires agile leadership.

In the current Covid-19 climate, we are mindful of the serious business challenges being experienced by our clients and all businesses. Many companies have already ceased trading and many more that are currently dormant, unfortunately, will not reopen. For those that do reopen, it is my opinion that the post-Covid-19 transition will present major challenges.

Companies may need to develop digital training plans to get the most out of remote working and collaboration tools, and to use them in a secure way. Team re-organisations may be required to enable smaller project groups to work together more effectively using digital technology. Digital sales and marketing strategies will become more important for acquiring new business.

At Mindseed, we have continued our business activities, albeit working from home, and we are actively working on adjusting our own digital transformation roadmap in response to Covid-19. We are continuing to liaise remotely with business colleagues in Ireland and abroad, and we hope to expand our operations through increased online/remote engagement with our growing network of business partners.

What big tech trends do you believe are changing the world and your industry specifically?

The democratisation of space is coinciding with emerging technologies like AI, IoT, 5G, low-power edge-compute devices, blockchain, cloud computing, etc. The convergence of these technologies is enabling the development of applications and services that simply were not possible before.

Each one of these technologies individually has the potential to change the world and, of course, they have already begun to do so, but I believe that it is the combination of these technologies that will truly disrupt markets across all sectors.

It is very difficult for companies, particularly SMEs, to develop low-level expertise in all of these emerging technologies. To really capitalise on the opportunities they present, collaborative development is more important than ever. It is my experience that this is something that Irish companies excel at, and much of the leadership in this area is coming from indigenous Irish companies.

As CTO of a niche consultancy company in a small country, I occupy a very privileged position with a bird's-eye view over a large part of the space sector in Ireland. A key goal of Mindseed is to put that bird's-eye view to work for our clients, and support ideation, identify opportunities for collaboration, and facilitate networking where collaborations are sought.

In terms of security, what are your thoughts on how we can better protect data?

As data becomes increasingly valuable with more and more powerful, and often frightening, mechanisms of extracting rich and personalised information from it, security has become more important than ever. Much like a digital transformation strategy, security strategies will look different for different companies and must be continuously evolved to deal with emerging threats.

From a technology developer point of view, one way to tackle the data protection issue is to remove the need to store or transmit sensitive data.

Low-cost edge compute devices are now enabling smart sensors to continuously analyse data 'on the fly' at source with no long-term data storage/retention. Where sensitive data must be stored/transmitted, it is vital that GDPR guidelines are followed to ensure that rights to privacy are respected and measures taken to protect those rights.

Want stories like this and more direct to your inbox? Sign up for Tech Trends, Silicon Republic's weekly digest of need-to-know tech news.

Patricia Moore Lecture

Website Development Contracts Part 3: Important Cloud and SLA Considerations

The cloud is an essential component of all e-commerce sites. Not all clouds, however, are created equal. The key thing here is reliability. Making sure that the cloud service and Service Level Agreement (SLA) are right for your business may not be clear before you enter into a website development contract.

This is Part 3 of a series providing advice about website development contracts for businesses engaged in e-commerce. Also see: Part 1: How to Avoid Major Disasters.Part 2:Who Owns the IP on Your Site?

Interesting aside -- while the term "Cloud" derives from a marketing label created in 2006 by Google, the remote cloud technology itself has been around since, at least,1964 when Dartmouth University launched remote computer access (at the time, called "Dartmouth timesharing").

In 1964, the timesharing model used by Dartmouth students dialed up over telephone lines to access mainframe computers, which is not much different than the cloud except to say that now we all access the remote computer systems on the Internet. Conceptually, the remote computer system of 1964 is not too different from the cloud we use today, albeit far faster, cheaper and with far more computing power than its 1964 predecessor at Dartmouth.

Cloud Contracting

Everyone reading this is familiar with the names of the major cloud providers: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Dell, and Rackspace (the "Big Cloud Vendors"). There are also dozens of smaller entities around the world that provide cloud services. In fact, many of the smaller entities actually provide their cloud services from the Big Cloud Vendors.

The most important part of this discussion is knowing the contractual terms for the cloud services that you might want to buy. Cloud agreements are all entered into online and remotely. Most people simply assume these agreements are non-negotiable, without ever taking the time to reach out and negotiate these online terms. Which is not necessarily the case.

While not all terms are readily negotiable, there are several examples of industry-specific provisions that can and should be tailored to suit. For instance, if your e-commerce business is regulated by the federal government (for example a bank), then the data in the cloud must reside in the U.S.

Actually, even more broadly speaking, the physical location of data storage is a provision that cloud providers will negotiate, even though you may have to pay a premium for picking a country for data storage.

Also, most of the Big Cloud Vendors have dozens of online contractual terms and conditions available from interconnected URLs, with varying terms and conditions, not just one. So, it is wise to investigate which online terms will apply to your arrangement and how those specific terms may impact your particular e-commerce business.

For example, depending on which Software as a Service (SaaS) you select, you may have a number of different options between using Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, or Infor software for ERP applications, or disaster recovery, or customer relationship management. You would be well-advised to look at the specific SaaS agreements and negotiate the provisions that are important to your e-commerce business.

Is a SLA really an Agreement?

Of course! The term SLA includes the word Agreement, but actually the SLA is more a description of the online service availability like for instance 99.999% availability over a 12-month period means the system can be down 5.25 minutes while 99.999% over a month means the system can be down 26.30 seconds. Here's a chart showing SLA availability:

If the cloud SLA does not clearly specify the agreed-upon availability percentage then the user should receive a credit. In certain instances, the SLA provides specific credits against the monthly fees, and other times the SLA is silent.

Beware an e-commerce cloud contract without an SLA. Think about it, what would you do? Probably ask the vendor for an SLA or just hope for the best? It makes more sense to have a specific SLA.

Generally, the SLA availability is provided on a monthly basis, but it could also be on a rolling 30-day period. In which case, the timing for the SLA does not begin anew on the first of every month and might allow for terrible service the last couple of days of a month and the vendor a restart when the new month begins of system unavailability.

Big Cloud Vendors SLAs

Also, most Big Cloud Vendors provide a variety of SaaS and the SLAs will vary depending on the SaaS used. We often find that the e-commerce website will use multiple SaaS so there is not just one SLA.

For instance, we recently assisted an e-commerce business that used one of the Big Cloud Vendors and actually used 16 different SaaS to run its business. As a result, the SLA varied depending upon the actual SaaS. And to make things more complicated, that Big Cloud Vendor actually had 172 different SLAs.

Conclusions

Take your time and investigate prospective cloud providers, including Big Cloud Vendors. Make sure you understand what you are contractually obligating your e-commerce business to and for how long. Of course, it would not be bad idea for you to engage a lawyer who has experience in drafting and negotiating website development contracts and SOWs, including cloud contracts and SLAs.

This website development contract series should help you learn more about legal issues to consider and what to negotiate. So please stay tuned for the future installments, which will include topics such as, indemnification, lawsuits and arbitrations, and related topics.

Peter Vogel has been an ECT News Network columnist since 2010. His focus is on technology and the law. Vogel is Of Counsel at Foley & Lardner LLP, and focuses on cybersecurity, privacy and information management. He tries lawsuits and negotiates cloud contracts dealing with e-commerce, ERP and the Internet. Before practicing law, he received a master's in computer science and was a mainframe programmer. His blog covers IT and Internet topics. Email Peter.

Chelsea Hilliard has been an ECT News Network columnist since 2019. As an associate at Foley & Lardner LLP, she focuses her business litigation practice on trade secret noncompetition and securities enforcement. She also helps clients with complex electronic discovery disputes and has been recognized as Texas Rising Star attorney by Texas Monthly, and a Top Lawyer under 40 by D Magazine. Email Chelsea.

LHoFT Webinar: The Employment Landscape Covid19 and beyond

Will Apple Silicon kill the Hackintosh? The odds against a self-built MacOS Arm computer

Apple finally made the news we've been expecting for a few years now official. The Macintosh is moving to Arm, or what Apple is calling "Apple Silicon." This is not the first, or even the second major processor architecture transition for the Mac. 

In fact, it's the third. In 1994, Apple moved from 68000-class processors to PowerPC. In 2005, Apple moved from the PowerPC to Intel x86. And now, in 2020, Apple is moving from Intel to Apple Silicon based on the Arm architecture. I discussed earlier the implications of this move to what I guess you could call "regular" Mac users. In this article, I want to discuss what this means to Mac users who use self-built Intel machines running MacOS, better known as Hackintosh users.

The Hackintosh community

Because so much of the Intel-based Mac architecture is based on off-the-shelf technology, a relatively substantial number of Mac users have decided to build their own machines throughout the years. Communities identified which motherboards, processors, network cards, and video cards were the most compatible, and then built custom drivers and boot loaders to make the whole thing possible.

While building a Hackintosh has never been as easy as firing up an Apple-produced machine, over the years Hackintoshes have become easier and easier to build due to better and better community-provided software tools.

Contrary to popular belief, Hackintoshing isn't just about saving money. While you can build an inexpensive Hackintosh to run MacOS, as I showed back in 2018 when I bought my then-new Mac mini, it's hard to achieve spec parity with a Hackintosh and save money.

As one of my favorite Hackintoshers Peter Paul Chato shows, what you can do is customize the machine with features not normally included in a Mac. Chato talks about adding a CD-ROM burner to his Hackintosh, which allowed him to burn CD-ROMs for an old, restored 1990s-vintage PowerPC Mac he was tinkering with.

Motivations for building Hackintoshes range from the need for flexibility and a custom system to the desire to tinker, to cost savings, and more. Back in 2017, when Apple pretty much abandoned Mac upgrades for extreme pro users, Hackintoshes were just about the only path forward for folks who needed more power.

Now, with more capable mainstream Macs as well as the terrifyingly expensive Mac Pro, users who need power have the option of buying from Apple. Some will still build Hacintoshes, but how long will that ability last?

Apple Silicon changes the game

Apple is farther along with Arm than many of us expected. At WWDC, all the MacOS features demonstrated were demonstrated on Apple Silicon rather than Macs running Intel. Apple is already shipping beta versions of MacOS that include Arm functionality, and the mainstream release of MacOS Big Sur in the fall will include Arm support as well as Intel.

Apple expects to ship its first Arm-based machines "by the end of the year" and expects the full transition to take two years. By that metric, we can expect the last Intel-based Mac to ship from Apple in 2022.

The thing about Apple Silicon is that it's very definitely not an off-the-shelf component. Apple has innovated with the iPhone and iPad in a large part because it controls the complete hardware stack. The company will be able to do the same with the Arm-based Macs.

That means it is highly unlikely (but not impossible, as I'll discuss below) that Hackintoshs will be viable once MacOS goes fully Apple Silicon. If off-the-shelf parts aren't available, the movement to build Hackintoshes from off-the-shelf parts will be seriously stymied.

So what does this mean for Hackintoshes? Let's take a look at two paths: what it means for Intel-based Hackintoshing, and under what wildly unlikely set of circumstances might there be a path forward for Arm-based Hackintoshing? Let's do Intel first.

The future of Intel-based Hackintoshes

Put simply, the future of Intel-based Hackintoshes will be the same as the future of Intel-based Macs. To get more clarity from my crystal ball, we'll need to look back into Macintosh history, back to 2005.

The last PowerPC-based Macs were the PowerMac G5s introduced in October of 2005 and sold until August 2006. 

The last version of MacOS (then called OS X) to support PowerPC (and only the G4 and G5) was 10.5 (otherwise known as Leopard). It was introduced with build 9A521 on October 26, 2007 and was revised eight times, until version 10.5.8 was discontinued on October 5, 2009. Leopard supported both PowerPC and Intel processors.

When Snow Leopard (10.6) was introduced on August 28, 2009, it only supported Intel processors.

As it pertains to transitioning processors, Apple released an OS version that still supported PowerPC a full year after the last PowerPC Mac was sold. It revised that code eight times over the next few years. The first supported release of an OS that no longer supported the old chips came out exactly four years after the last old chip Mac was introduced.

Let's apply that to what we know of the Apple Silicon transition. Apple expects to start the transition now and move all Macs to Arm by 2022. We can expect, then, that the last Intel Mac will come out sometime in 2022. If this transition tracks with the previous one, we can expect support for Intel to last about four years.

In other words, don't expect updates of MacOS for Intel Macs after 2026. 

Of course, it's possible to use machines after their OS stops being updated. Figure another few years before software developers have moved far enough off of the old architecture that key apps just stop working.

My guess is that Intel Macs will be reasonably viable machines until about 2028-2030, or, essentially, for the rest of this decade.

In other words, feel free to go ahead and build an Intel-based Hackintosh. But understand it will be obsolete by the end of the decade — and so, probably, will be the practice of Hackintoshing.

Unless…

The possibility of Arm-based Hackintoshes

Hackintoshes exist because it's reasonably practical to take off-the-shelf parts and turn them into a PC that runs MacOS. But there are quite a few Hackintoshes that weren't based on a PC build, but instead were repurposed laptops that had enough compatible hardware to make the conversion possible.

Microsoft has been flirting with a move (or at least a cohabitation) with Arm for years now. As far back as 2012, we were mocking Microsoft's attempts to move Windows to the very ill-fated Windows RT.

But there are modern Windows machines based on the Arm processor, such as the Microsoft Surface X. It runs traditional 32-bit x86 apps in emulation, so most Windows apps will run on the Arm processor. If Surface X and other Windows products like it prove to be a success, expect more Arm-based Windows machines to be introduced to the market.

So let's move our crystal ball forward to, say, 2028. By that time, there's an entire army of Arm-based Windows laptops, which are fast and support the great battery life that's an Arm trademark.

Problem #1 for Arm-based Hackintoshes will have been solved. There will be enough Arm-based machines to form a foundation for Hackintoshing.

Apple has a tendency to name its OS versions after California locations, so I'm going to call the imaginary 2028 release of MacOS Copperopolis (it's real, look it up). That brings us to Problem #2: Can Apple Silicon-based Copperopolis run on off-the-shelf Arm systems?

That… depends. Back in 2016, we were worried that the introduction of the proprietary T2 chip to new Macs would spell the end of Hackintoshing, but it has had virtually no effect.

If Copperopolis and other future Apple Silicon-based MacOS releases rely heavily on special chipset functions, then no. But if those future releases merely rely on performance-related custom silicon, then it's possible non-Apple Arm-based PCs could run MacOS — at least with the same level of discovery and tweaking that it took to get off-the-shelf Intel to run MacOS.

We won't know for a while. But I'm betting that since the upcoming Big Sur will support Arm, and the beta for Big Sur is actually available now, some members of the Hackintosh community are already testing MacOS on off-the-shelf Arm processors.

So keep coming back to ZDNet. If some intrepid Hackintoshers manage to get Big Sur running on an Arm PC, we'll let you know. 

As for the future of the Hackintosh, we have to turn to our Magic 8 Ball for an answer: "Reply hazy. Try again."

Do you Hackintosh? What are your predictions, hopes, and fears for the future of Hackintoshing? Let us know in the comments below. 

You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.

Apple T2 situation worse than I thought!

Acer Teases Swift 5 Laptop With Intel 'Tiger Lake' CPU Xe Graphics Tech

(Credit: Acer)

Acer is previewing an update to an existing Windows laptop that's expected to debut with Intel's new "Tiger Lake" processors and Xe graphics technology. 

On Tuesday, Acer announced the company's refresh to the Swift 5, a 14-inch notebook that's designed to be thin and light. Expect it to launch in October, starting at $999. 

The Swift 5 is slated to arrive with Intel's "next gen" processor, the PC maker said, a likely nod to the Tiger Lake family of mobile CPUs. The same laptop will also feature, in some models, Intel's new Xe graphics architecture deployed in graphics silicon as part of the CPU. Xe is designed to compete, in coming integrated-graphics and dedicated-chip flavors, with GPU solutions from Nvidia GeForce family and AMD's Radeon group. 

(Credit: Acer)

However, the Xe architecture won't arrive as the basis of a discrete graphics chip inside this laptop. Instead, the technology backs the graphics silicon that is integrated into the next-generation processor, according to Acer. This Xe-based graphics will be the successor to the "Gen 11" Iris Plus and UHD Graphics solutions integrated into Intel's "Ice Lake" 10th Generation mobile processors. 

Last week, Intel gave a taste of what we can expect from a Tiger Lake setup like this one. On Twitter, the company demoed a prototype laptop with Tiger Lake and the integrated Xe architecture running the game Battlefield V at 1080p on high graphics settings. The clip shows the game, which was published in 2018, running fairly smoothly at 30 frames per second, despite the laptop having no dedicated GPU. 

Still, consumers who want a bigger graphical boost will be able to buy the Swift 5 with an optional Nvidia GeForce MX350 dedicated chip, which will presumably be a step up from the Xe silicon on the Swift 5's processor.

As for Tiger Lake, Intel is promising the chips will offer a "double-digit" performance gain, thanks to the company's 10-nanometer manufacturing technology. The Tiger Lake processors and its motherboards have also been designed to be smaller, enabling PC makers to create thinner and lighter laptops.

To improve the Swift 5, Acer has managed to minimize the bezels around the 14-inch screen even more. The product now has a 90 percent screen-to-body ratio, an increase from the 86.4 percent ratio of last year's Swift 5 model. The laptop also comes with a touch display that features Corning's antimicrobial coating to help keep germs at bay.

"Additionally, users have the option to further include an antimicrobial coating on the touchpad, keyboard, and all covers of the device," Acer noted in its initial release. 

(Credit: Acer)

Another change is to the product's hinge, which will slightly elevate the rear of the laptop when fully opened, "allowing for a more ergonomic typing experience," and better cooling, according to the company.  

The laptop still weighs in at 2.2 pounds and retains its metallic chassis. Buyers can outfit it with up to 1TB of SSD-based storage, and up to 16GB of RAM. Other key perks include Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, two built-in stereo speakers, and a USB Type-C/Thunderbolt 3 port.

Further Reading

Laptop Reviews

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Ray Tracing on Intel Ice Lake Gen11 GPU. Neon Noire CRYENGINE

Computer makers unveil 50 AI servers with Nvidia’s A100 GPUs

Computer makers are unveiling a total of 50 servers with Nvidia's A100 graphics processing units (GPUs) to power AI, data science, and scientific computing applications. The first GPU based on the Nvidia Ampere architecture, the A100 is the company's largest leap in GPU performance to date, with features such as the ability for one GPU to be partitioned into seven separate GPUs as needed, Nvidia said. The company made the announcement ahead of the ISC High Performance online event, which is dedicated to high-performance computing.

Unveiled in May, the A100 GPU has 54 billion transistors (the on-off switches that are the building blocks of all things electronic) and can execute 5 petaflops of performance, or about 20 times more than the previous-generation chip Volta. This means central processing unit (CPU) servers that cost $20 million and take up 22 racks can be replaced by new servers that cost $3 million and take up just four GPU-based server racks, said Nvidia product marketing director Paresh Kharya in a press briefing.

The systems are coming from computer makers that include Asus, Atos, Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, Gigabyte, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Inspur, Lenovo, One Stop Systems, Quanta/QCT, and Supermicro. Server availability varies, with 30 systems expected this summer and over 20 more by the end of the year, Kharya said.

Integrating Mellanox

Above: Nvidia's Mellanox interconnect technology.

Image Credit: Nvidia

The latest machines include new InfiniBand interconnect technology from Mellanox, which Nvidia paid $7 billion to acquire in 2019. Nvidia integrated Mellanox technology with the A100 to create Selene, which Nvidia bills as a top 10 supercomputer and the world's most energy-efficient computer. Selene was designed in less than a month and provides over 1 exaflop of AI processing. Kharya said supercomputers like Selene will help Nvidia further penetrate the world's top supercomputers.

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Last year, Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) were part of 125 of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, according to ISC. If you count the supercomputers with Mellanox InfiniBand technology, that number is more than 300, and the list is expected to grow even larger in 2020.

"If you look at the top 500 list, the reason why Nvidia is so successful in supercomputing is because scientific computing has changed," Kharya said. "We've entered a new era, one that has expanded beyond traditional modeling and simulation workloads to include AI, data analytics, edge screening, and big data visualization."

Kharya said Mellanox interconnect chips power the world's leading weather forecast supercomputers. Weather and climate models are both compute- and data-intensive. Forecast quality depends on the model's complexity and level of resolution. And supercomputer performance depends on interconnect technology to move data quickly across different computers.

"It's exciting to have the best compute on one side and the best network on the other, and now we can start to combine those technologies together and start building amazing things," said Nvidia senior VP Gilad Shainer in a press briefing.

Above: Nvidia has set a new record with the RAPIDS benchmark.

Image Credit: Nvidia

Customers using Mellanox include the Spanish Meteorological Agency, the China Meteorological Administration, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, NASA, and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

The Beijing Meteorological Service has selected 200 Gigabit HDR InfiniBand interconnect technology to accelerate its new supercomputing platform, which will be used to enhance weather forecasting, improve climate and environmental research, and serve the weather forecasting information needs of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Nvidia said it has been able to run the RAPIDS suite of open source data science software in just 14.5 minutes, breaking the previous record of performance by 19.5 times. (A rival central processing unit (CPU) system does the same task in 4.7 hours.) Nvidia owes its gains to its new Nvidia DGX A100 systems using the Nvidia A100 artificial intelligence GPU chip. The 16 Nvidia DGX A100 systems used in the benchmark test had a total of 128 Nvidia A100 GPUs with Mellanox interconnects. The company also unveiled the Nvidia Mellanox UFM Cyber-AI platform, which minimizes downtime in InfiniBand datacenters by harnessing AI-powered analytics to detect security threats and operational issues.

This extension of the UFM platform product portfolio — which has managed InfiniBand systems for nearly a decade — applies AI to learn a datacenter's operational cadence and network workload patterns. It draws on both real-time and historic telemetry and workload data. Against this baseline, it tracks the system's health and network modifications and detects performance problems.

The new platform provides alerts of abnormal system and application behavior and potential system failures and threats, as well as performing corrective actions. It also delivers security alerts in cases of attempted system hacking, such as cryptocurrency mining. The result is reduced datacenter downtime — which typically costs more than $300,000 an hour, according to the ITIC 2020 report.

Fighting the coronavirus

Above: Nvidia's GPUs are being enlisted in the coronavirus fight.

Image Credit: Nvidia

Kharya said Nvidia's scientific computing platform has been enlisted in the fight against COVID-19. In genomics, Oxford Nanopore Technologies was able to sequence the virus genome in just seven hours using Nvidia GPUs. For infection analysis and prediction, the Nvidia RAPIDS team has helped create the GPU-accelerated Plotly's Dash, a data visualization tool that enables clearer insights into real-time infection rate analysis.

Nvidia's tools can be used to predict the availability of hospital resources across the U.S. In structural biology, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the University of Texas, Austin are using GPU-accelerated software CryoSPARC to reconstruct the first 3D structure of the virus protein using cryogenic electron microscopy.

In treatment, Nvidia worked with the National Institutes of Health and built AI to accurately classify COVID-19 infection based on lung scans so doctors can devise efficient treatment plans. In drug discovery, Oak Ridge National Laboratory ran the Scripps Research Institute's AutoDock on the GPU accelerated Summit Supercomputer to screen a billion potential drug combinations in just 12 hours.

In robotics, startup Kiwi is building robots to deliver medical supplies autonomously while in edge detection, Whiteboard Coordinator built an AI system to automatically measure elevated body temperatures, screening well over 2,000 health care workers per hour. In total, Nvidia accelerates more than 700 high-performance computing applications.

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