The past couple of days have seen some important announcements in the domain of artificial intelligence (AI). Sony entered the field of AI-powered drones with the launch of Airpeak, and Silicon Valley-based startup Mipsology joined hands with Japanese software development firm OKI IDS to further AI-based image processing in Japan using Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FGPAs). Now, there's another addition to this list.
Today, IBM and AMD announced a multi-year joint development partnership under which the two firms will work together to extend and improve their security and AI offerings. At the heart of the agreement is the aim to further Confidential Computing, which is a technology that encrypts data running on virtual machines—while workloads are running—using hardware solutions.
This provides an additional layer of security, inhibiting malicious actors from stealing data in the event of a break-in. The goal of the partnership is to ease hybrid cloud adoption for highly regulated businesses or organizations that are concerned about unauthorized access to data in use in the public cloud. The two firms aim to realize this idea with open-source software, standards, and system architectures in hybrid cloud environments, including AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads and others that use virtualization and encryption.
"The commitment of AMD to technological innovation aligns with our mission to develop and accelerate the adoption of the hybrid cloud to help connect, secure and power our digital world", said Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research. Meanwhile the Executive Vice President and CTO of AMD, Mark Papermaster, claimed that "this agreement between AMD and IBM aligns well with our long-standing commitment to collaborating with leaders in the industry. AMD is excited to extend our work with IBM on AI, accelerating data center workloads, and improving security across the cloud."
