Intel's Open Source Technology Summit runs from May 14 to May 16 this year, and for the first time, it's opening up the event to participants from many different companies, including Amazon, Google, Huawei, and Microsoft. During the event, Intel announced a range of contributions it's making to open-source technologies particularly in the fields of AI and cloud computing.
For starters, Intel is helping modernize core infrastructure so that it can be better used with its own architecture. Part of that is the ModernFW Initiative, which aims to improve the scalability and reliability by modularizing firmware design and cutting back some of the legacy code. This could also reduce security risks, since it means that the firmware can provide just enough code to boot the kernel.
Intel also announced rust-vmm, which offers a set of hypervisor components meant for specific use cases, and it's built a special-purpose cloud hypervisor based on it. The company says it should provide more security and performance for containers in cloud native environments.
Additionally, also says it'll assign developers to make contributions to the code of critical system infrastructure projects. Bash, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, and the R programming language are just some of the projects it plans to contribute to.
Moving on to Linux, Intel announced the Developer Edition of its Clear Linux distribution, which includes a new installer and store, and comes with all of Intel's hardware features enabled out-of-the-box. Clear Linux also now provides end-to-end integration and optimization for Intel hardware features, and it also supports the Deep Learning Reference Stack and Data Analytics Reference Stack, which are designed to improve AI and data analytics performance in Intel Xeon processors.
Intel is also making contributions to the automotive industry and the automation of industrial processes. This includes the announcement of Fusion Edge Stacks, which is meant to support the workloads required by connected devices using the ACRN device hypervisor, Clear Linux, Zephyr Project, and Android.
Lastly, there's the Intel Robot SDK, which brings together the company's hardware and software to make it easier to create AI-enabled robotics and automation solutions. The SDK also includes an optimized computer vision stack.
