NIST and Google Partner to Develop Open Source Chips

Google and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have signed a research and development agreement (https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2022/09/nist-and-google-create-new-supply-chips-researchers-and-tech-startups) for production of open source chips.

The chips will be manufactured by SkyWater Technology in Minnesota, according to the announcement. "Google will pay the initial cost of setting up production and will subsidize the first production run. NIST, with university research partners, will design the circuitry for the chips. The circuit designs will be open source, allowing academic and small business researchers to use the chips without restriction or licensing fees." As many as 40 different chip designs are planned, which will be optimized for different applications.

"The SkyWater foundry will produce the chips in the form of 200-mm discs of patterned silicon, called wafers," the announcement says, and the first production run will be distributed to leading US universities. "Giving researchers access to chips in this format will allow them to prototype designs and emerging technologies that, if successful, can be integrated into production more quickly, thus speeding the transfer of technology from lab to market."

"By creating a new and affordable domestic supply of chips for research and development, this collaboration aims to unleash the innovative potential of researchers and startups across the nation," says Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Laurie E. Locascio.

Security and Compliance Drive Adoption of Observability Practices

New Relic's 2022 Observability Forecast (https://newrelic.com/observability-forecast/2022/about-this-report) surveyed tech professionals across 14 countries to better understand their use and adoption of observability tools and approaches.

In regard to what is driving adoption of observability practices, the top response was an increased focus on security, governance, risk, and compliance (49%). Other factors included:

• Development of cloud-native application architectures (46%)
• Increased focus on customer experience management (44%)
• Migration to multi-cloud environment (42%)
• Adoption of open source technologies (39%)

The survey also asked whether practitioners viewed observability as more of an enabler for achieving business goals or more for incident response, with the following results:

• Observability was completely or generally for achieving core business goals (50%)
• Observability was equally for business goals and incident response (28%)
• Observability was more for incident response/insurance (21%)

The survey also found that "IT operations teams were most likely to be responsible for observability followed by network operations and DevOps teams."