Cloud Native and Industry News - Week of February 9, 2022
Every Thursday, Nick Chase and Eric Gregory from Mirantis go over the week’s cloud native and industry news. This week, Eric and Nick discussed new cloud native releases, graduations, and exits; updates on the chip industry—and various global players' efforts to gain an edge in the supply crunch; and more. View the recording (register to view the re-play).
To join Nick and Eric next Wednesday, February 9, at 1:00pm EST/10:00am PST, register here.
Topics covered this week include:
- LitmusChaos joins the CNCF Incubator
- Codenotary launches cloud service to deliver software bills of materials
- CNCF archives OpenTracing project
- Google announces General Availability for Google Cloud Deploy
- Nvidia ends effort to acquire Arm
- EU and US make plans to fund chip manufacturing
- Cisco announces availability of Wi-Fi 6E
LitmusChaos joins the CNCF Incubator
Eric Gregory: Last week the CNCF announced that open source chaos engineering platform LitmusChaos has advanced from the CNCF Sandbox to the Incubator, joining projects like Argo, Cilium, and fellow chaos engineering tool Chaos Mesh. Litmus provides generic chaos tests for Kubernetes environments and is designed to make automated testing easy, with robust Prometheus metrics.
Codenotary launches cloud service to deliver software bills of materials
This week Codenotary launched their CodenotaryCloud platform, a new offering designed to generate a software bill of materials for cloud applications. As software supply chain security draws more and more attention, CodenotaryCloud is aimed at giving organizations complete cloud stack visibility and helping them to inventory the components in their applications. The pitch here is that in a case like the Log4Shell vulnerability, that enables a team to know immediately whether they’re using an affected component, even if it’s buried deep down in the stack as a dependency of a dependency of a dependency.
CNCF archives OpenTracing project
The CNCF has announced that it will be archiving the OpenTracing project, and will no longer provide support. The reason it's being archived is that it has now been completely incorporated into the OpenTelemetry project, so if you're using and presumably relying on this project, never fear, you can just switch over to OpenTelemetry.
Google announces General Availability for Google Cloud Deploy
Nick Chase: Google has announced the GA release of Google Cloud Deploy, which is the company's managed continuous delivery service for Google Kubernetes Engine. It enables you to do declarative builds, connect to external workflows, and use security and auditing controls.
Nvidia ends effort to acquire Arm
Eric Gregory: Previously we’ve discussed Nvidia’s attempt to acquire Arm and the implications that might have for the chip industry; this month the potential acquisition fell through, with the two companies announcing that the deal had collapsed. At the same time, Arm’s CEO Simon Segars stepped down with Rene Haas taking the role, and the company is now reportedly exploring a public offering.
After the announcement of the prospective deal, the companies saw significant regulatory pressure in both the U.S. and the E.U., with many observers nervous of how a merger might impact Arm’s licensing models. As it stands now, Arm says it will continue to expand into the CPU and GPU market as well as the AI space.
EU and US make plans to fund chip manufacturing
When it comes to chip manufacturing, the EU isn’t just keeping an eye out for antitrust issues–the body is also looking to fund startups and expansions in the chip space, to the tune of 2 billion euros. The Chips Act, currently being proposed by EU lawmakers, would loosen rules around member state aid to industry and direct funds into support for semiconductor production.
In the U.S. the House passed a bill that will bring 52 billion dollars in funding to semiconductor companies for R&D and factory construction, as well as earmarking 45 billion to otherwise grease the supply chain. The bill will need to be reconciled with a Senate version before heading to the president’s desk for final approval.
The effort aims to boost semiconductor capacity in the U.S.; at present, the United States produces 12% of the planet’s chips, down from a high of 37% in past decades.
The Senate’s bill, called the United States Innovation and Competition Act, passed decisively and on a bipartisan basis, so supporters of this initiative—including, as you can imagine, the major players in the semiconductor industry—are expressing optimism about its success. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger called the bill “an investment for our future.”
Cisco announces availability of Wi-Fi 6E
Cisco has announced the availability of Wi-Fi 6E, which is at the 6Mhz frequency, designed to alleviate congestion for hybrid and high traffic setups. The technology, which will be available in its new Catalyst 9136 and Meraki MR57 access points. It's also announcing a private 5G service, a managed service which will supposedly enable users to "seamlessly transition between technologies” as they roam around facilities.
All of this is interesting because a lack of chips has meant that it's difficult to get Wi-Fi 6E end user devices such as phones, tablets, and so on, so many users are opting to stick with Wi-fi 6 and wait for Wi-fi 7, but by adding this 5G service Cisco may be finding a way around that.
