Connectivity & Cloud - Page 4

The European Council has pushed ahead with its "common charger directive" that now only requires formal signatures by the presidents of the EU and EC, mandating that all small chargeable electronics will use USB-C charging ports in the future.

USB-C charging on future electronic devices has been officially approved by the European Council, with the President of the European Parliament and the President of the European Council needing to provide their signatures, with the European Parliament passing the common charger directive with a vote of 602-13.

What does this mean? It means that electronic manufacturers will have to design their devices with USB-C charging by the fall of 2024, and this includes Apple and its future-gen iPhones that will be sold across Europe. Bigger devices like laptops, will see makers having a little while longer to comply with the EC's new directive: they've got until 2026 to have all laptops with a USB-C charging port.

Rambus has just announced the availability of its next-gen PCIe 6.0 Interface Subsystem that packs PHY and controller IP, with the latest version of the Compute Express Link (CXL) specification version 3.0 also supported.

The new Rambus PCIe 6.0 Interface Subsystem features up to 64 GT/s ready to drive next-gen data centers and AI systems, with Rambus saying its new PCIe 6.0 Interface Subsystem is fully optimized to meet the needs of advanced heterogenous computing architectures.

There's a PCIe controller that has an Integrity and Data Encryption (IDE) engine that is dedicated to protecting the PCIe links and the valuable data transferred over them.

It must be the month for connectivity and cable upgrades with USB4 v2 specifications announced yesterday, while the day before we had DisplayPort 2.1 and its beefed-up specs teased, and today we have Intel with a tease of the next generation of Thunderbolt connectivity.

Intel's next-gen Thunderbolt connectivity was aligned to the USB Implementer's Forum's (USB-IF) release of the new USB4 v2 specifications, with the next-gen Thunderbolt driving up to 80Gbps of bi-directional bandwidth, which will unleash up to 120Gbps for totally next-gen display and connectivity experiences.

Thunderbolt 4 currently pumps out up to 40Gbps of bandwidth, so the drive up to 80Gbps is a doubling in bandwidth, while the huge 120Gbps of bandwidth is 3x what Thunderbolt 4 is capable of today. Intel's new Thunderbolt standard will also support the just-released DisplayPort 2.1 specification and is backward compatible with previous versions of Thunderbolt, USB, and DisplayPort.

The USB-IF has announced the very latest (and super-fast) USB4 Version 2.0 standard, which is a major update to the USB standard that unleashes a huge 80Gbps of performance over USB-C connectivity.

USB-IF (the USB Implementer's Forum) announced the news today, doubling the maximum aggregate bandwidth of USB4 from 40Gbps to a huge 80Gbps, which will drive future-gen displays, high-performance storage and docks, and everything in between. The USB Type-C and USB Power Delivery (USB PD) specifications have also been updated, now unleashed to up to 80Gbps of performance.

The branding will be changing, with USB 80Gbps solutions featuring a new packaging logo that makes it easier for consumers -- unlike the HDMI standard, which can be confusing AF -- with USB 80Gbps products being fully backwards compatible with all previous versions of USB.

Consumers continue to purchase connected products, and 38% of households now have at least one smart home device, according to a consumer survey from Parks Associates. That number is a small 2% bump year-over-year, with other analysts specifically interested in how smart home security and home energy can be enhanced using Internet-connected devices.

Almost 30 percent of consumers have purchased a smart home device in the past year, while 44 percent of US households plan to purchase at least one smart home device in the next year. It shouldn't be a surprise that even more consumers are thinking about purchasing a connected device, with even more devices being added to the marketplace. In addition, mobile support to control these devices also has continually improved, and should continue to do so in the future.

As noted by Chris White, research director at Parks Associates: "There is so much to talk about. All channels that develop and deliver smart home products have seen new demand, with rising consumer expectations and new opportunities to deliver an integrated connected experience in the home. We are excited to bring industry leaders together to talk about the advancements in the connected home."

Royal Caribbean has announced that it is installing SpaceX Starlink internet services to its fleet of ships, where it is the first in the cruise industry to have SpaceX's high-speed, low-latency connections for guests on their ships.

The company will be adding Starlink terminals to its ships immediately, where it will be leveraging the insights the company obtained from its trial on board the Freedom of the Seas which "received tremendous positive feedback from guests and crew". The Royal Caribbean Group expects that the installation of Starlink SpaceX hardware will be completed by the end of Q1 2023: or March 31, 2023.

Anyone who has been on a cruise ship will know that internet access is usually absolutely garbage, and expensive. SpaceX Starlink internet connectivity out at sea, with great low latency and connection speeds... well, that would definitely make the cruise experience better. I've been on a couple of cruises myself and would've loved the access to something like Starlink out at sea.

Jared Mauch is a senior network architect based in Michigan, who after having crappy internet and being told by Comcast it would cost $50,000+ to extend their fiber service to his house, built his own ISP.

Yes, you read that right: the mad man built his own ISP thanks to $2.6 million in funding from the US government and their Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds program. Mauch continued to work at his day job while building his own ISP, where he was a senior network architect at Akamai, while building his own ISP: Washtenaw Fiber Properties LLC, which was home to around 70 customers and will be expanding to around 600 customers in the near future thanks to those recovery funds.

The US government's slice of recovery funds to Washtenaw County was $71 million for infrastructure projects, with the county dedicating a part of those funds for broadband internet. The county has completed a broadband study before the pandemic, where it surveyed unserved locations -- places that didn't have internet connections -- according to Mauch. Once the funds were flowing, the county then issued a request for proposals (RFP) that asked contractors to start connecting fiber to houses "that were known to be unserved or underserved based on the existing survey".

Intel is working on a beefed-up NUC system, with codename "Serpent Canyon" officially teased. Check it out:

The new Intel NUC 12 "Serpent Canyon" packs up to a 14-core Intel Core i7-12700H processor and Intel's new in-house Arc A770M discrete GPU. The CPU and its 14 cores and 20 threads will spool up to 4.7GHz, also featuring 24MB of L3 cache.

GPU wise, Intel has upgraded from NVIDIA and its GeForce RTX 2060 with 12GB of GDDR6 memory, over to the Arc A770M GPU with 16GB of GDDR6 memory (the full ACM-G10 GPU with 32 Xe-Cores). We don't know how much TDP the A770M GPU inside of the new Intel "Serpent Canyon" NUC has, but it should fall between 120W and 150W.

SpaceX continues to push satellite internet technology, with their latest Starlink satellites rocking newer laser communication instead of radio links.

The company has been launching its lastest generation satellites into lower Earth orbit since September 2021, but they will soon go active and we'll see laser-based SpaceX Starlink satellite internet connectivity. The new inter-optical connectivity aka lasers will be used to serve users in the polar regions, where SpaceX filed an application with the FCC's International Bureau with the Committee approving the temporary use of Starlink satellites at latitudes higher than 53 degrees.

Elon explained in a tweet: "Starlink inter-satellite laser links should be operational by end of year. This will dramatically reduce global latency. Light travels ~40% faster in vacuum/air than in fiber optic cables & satellite path length is shorter (cables follow coastlines)".

Google has tripled a previous world record it set for calculating digits of pi only three years ago.

Google Cloud was used to calculate 31.4 trillion digits of pi in 2019, a world record later broken in 2021 by the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons, which calculated another 31.4 trillion digits. On June 9th, 2022, Google has now announced that it has reclaimed the record, using Google Cloud once again to calculate 100 trillion digits of pi.

Google Cloud's compute service, Compute Engine, has gotten faster in the years since it first crunched a record number of digits of pi, thanks to recent upgrades such as the "Compute Engine N2 machine family, 100 Gbps egress bandwidth, Google Virtual NIC, and balanced Persistent Disks."

Earlier this year rumors started swirling that Google was working on a "less expensive" version of their Chromecast video streaming dongle. It would make sense for Google to offer a device for the market segment that does not need a device that supports more than a 1080p resolution as the current model supports 4K HDR.

Recently it has been revealed that Google has submitted a device, G454V, for review to the FCC. In the filing, it is described as a "wireless device", which in the past Google has used the same description for products like the Nest Audio, Chromecast Voice Remote, and Daydream View Controller.

From the filing, the device supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. The biggest reveal of what this device could possibly be comes from its description in the test configuration, which describes it as a wireless streaming device. Additionally, the unit is being tested with a remote control device being described in the FCC testing documentation.

The future of display connectivity cables is constantly changing, with DisplayPort 2.0 monitors and graphics cards debuting later this year, HDMI 2.1a is also being introduced.

HDMI 2.1a was recently announced by the HDMI Licensing Administrator, designed to give active cables more power directly from the source device... all without needing additional power cables. This means that cables that are longer than 5M won't have as many issues, especially when driving the full 40Gbps or higher 48Gbps through HDMI 2.1 cables.

The big difference with the new HDMI 2.1a specification: the active cables can only be attached in one direction -- with one end of the cable specifically labeled to attach to the HDMI Source, while the other side will be connected ot the HDMI Sink device. If you hook the cable up in reverse, well, it won't actually work.

The results of the data transmission experiment were presented at the International Conference on Laser and Electro-Optics (CLEO) 2022 on May 19th, 2022.

Researchers from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) managed to transmit 1.02 petabits of data per second using multi-core fiber (MCF) with a standard cladding diameter of 0.125 millimeters. The NICT broke the one petabit per second data transmission rate first in December 2020 but did so with a 15-mode optical fiber.

Such a transmission system requires complex MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) digital signal processing to make sense of the signals and limits its practical applications. The latest transmission system uses 4-core MCF and can transmit 1.02 petabit per second over 51.7 kilometers (32.1 miles), compared to the 610 terabits per second previously achieved in a similar fiber.

Mellanox was acquired by NVIDIA a few years ago at a cost of $6.9 billion, and now we're seeing NVIDIA unveil its new ConnectX-7 SKUs that have some impressive features.

NVIDIA's new ConnectX-7 SKUs come in PCIe, OCP NIC 3.0, and IC form factors. At the International Supercomputing Conference, Serve the Home spotted a single-port PCIe version of NVIDIA's new ConnectX-7 that uses a SuperMicro SuperBlade.

We're only just seeing PCIe 5.0 connectivity hitting consumer boards with the new Intel Z690 chipset and Intel 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs, while AMD and its new X670 + X670E chipsets and upcoming Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series CPUs supporting PCIe 5.0 on upcoming motherboards. But in servers and data centers, PCIe 5.0 is used for its super-high-speed bandwidth.

New York City has just removed its last payphone booth from the city, a once iconic symbol across NYC -- where Clark Kent would turn into Superman -- has been replaced by the world of smartphones.

This isn't something that has happened overnight, with the de Blasio administration taking in proposals on how to reimagine the replacement of public payphones across New York City. The officials then accepted CityBridge to come in and develop + operate LinkNYC kiosks, which offer services to people like free phone calls, Wi-Fi, and even charging your device.

Commissioner Matthew Fraser said in the release said: "As a native New Yorker, saying goodbye to the last street pay phone is bittersweet because of the prominent place they've held in the city's physical landscape for decades. Just like we transitioned from the horse and buggy to the automobile and from the automobile to the airplane, the digital evolution has progressed from payphones to high-speed Wi-Fi kiosks to meet the demands of our rapidly changing daily communications needs".

We knew they were coming, but it looks like they're here: next-gen USB-C cables that are capable of delivering a rather crazy 240W of power.

The new USB-C 2.1 cables can deliver up to 240W of power, as well as up to 40Gbps of data... turning up out of nowhere by Club 3D. The cables aren't exactly for sale, nor are they on retailer shelves just yet... but the new Club 3D CAC-1573, CAC-1575, and CAC-1576 cables are on their way.

Which one will you want? Well, if you want the fastest then the Club 3D CAC-1576 is a USB4 Gen3x2 Type-C bi-directional cable that offers the full 240W of USB-PD (Power Delivery) and up to 40Gbps of bandwidth which is enough to drive up to 8K 60Hz. It's a small 1m cable, so make sure you're very close.

Intel and Lockheed Martin already collaborate with strategic relationships that have been nurtured for over 10 years now, but the two have just entered a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the future of 5G technology.

The companies will use 5G software and hardware solutions to push for faster, and quicker actions for the U.S. Department of Defense. Intel already provides 5G solutions that are integrated into Lockheed Martin's 5G.MIL Hybrid Base Station.

Lockheed Martin's 5G.MIL Hybrid Base Station "acts as a multi-network gateway for ubiquitous communications between military personnel and current and emerging platforms including satellites, aircraft, ships and ground vehicles". Inside, Lockheed Martin also uses Intel's advanced processor technologies and innovations on network and the edge "to bring cloud capabilities to the areas of tactical need".

If you're living in Russia right now, I can't imagine how it must feel being cancel cultured out of civilized society so quickly... but now rumors are flying that Russia is going to "disconnect from the global internet".

Belarus-based media outlet Nexta tweeted: "#Russia began active preparations for disconnection from the global Internet. No later than March 11, all servers and domains must be transferred to the #Russian zone. In addition, detailed data on the network infrastructure of the sites is being collected".

Now, I don't want to sit here and write doomsday clickbait BS when it comes to a topic like this... but Russia has been toying with disconnecting from the "global internet" for a while now. Back in July 2021, Russia "managed to disconnect itself from the global internet during tests in June and July", not even a year ago, reported Reuters at the time.

SpaceX is sending even more Starlink terminals to Ukraine, with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeting out thanks once again, to Elon Musk.

Zelensky must be planning far ahead and sees the war over soon obviously, as he quips that he chilled and chatted to Musk about "possible space projects". He's got the time to take away from the battle of his lifetime, and his people's lifetime, to talk space projects -- alright. He adds that "I'll talk about this after the war", where I guess Ukraine will be able to defend itself from enemies blowing up its future space projects launching off Ukrainian soil. Maybe they can get Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and his defense startup Anduril Industries to help out with some Terminator-level AI robots defending Ukrainian air (and soon, spaced) airspace.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said: "Talked to @elonmusk. I'm grateful to him for supporting Ukraine with words and deeds. Next week we will receive another batch of Starlink systems for destroyed cities. Discussed possible space projects 🚀. But I'll talk about this after the war".

Qualcomm has just unveiled its new Wi-Fi 7 solutions at Mobile World Congress (MWC) last week, with the company proudly teasing the "world's first announced Wi-Fi 7 product".

The company is introducing its new FastConnect 7800 which has some deliciously high speeds and low latency, with Qualcomm promising high-speed, ultra-low latency Wi-Fi that are only capable with the next-gen Wi-Fi 7 standard. Qualcomm is using a High Band Simultaneous (HBS) Multi-Link technology, which the company says is the "premium capability" for Wi-Fi 7 networks.

Qualcomm explains: "At Qualcomm Technologies, good is never good enough - for us or our customers. As a leading wireless technology innovator, we constantly drive progress to bring you the best technology solutions and experiences. Today, that pursuit comes in the form of initiating a new era of connectivity supporting both Wi-Fi 7 and next-gen Bluetooth connectivity: Qualcomm FastConnect 7800, the world's fastest and most versatile connectivity system".