You can certainly sense the magic in the air at AWS re:Invent 2019! Onica’s AI.Magic lab in the Quad at Aria is testing attendees’ AI/ML wizarding techniques as they train using wand gestures. AWS also has its fair share of “spell-tacular” service announcements to kick off the week. During Midnight Madness, AWS announced new services such as Amazon Transcribe Medical, AWS DeepComposer, and EC2 Image Builder. You can catch Onica’s summary of these services here.
Let’s dive into a recap of some AWSome announcements from Day 1 at AWS re:Invent.
Improve Security with Access Analyzer
Access Analyzer is a new AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) feature. This feature helps you to monitor the permission policies that are attached to resources in your account. The policies that the IAM Access Analyzer monitor are Amazon S3 buckets, AWS KMS keys, Amazon SQS queues, AWS IAM roles, and AWS Lambda functions. The IAM Access Analyzer will not only allow you to quickly see overly permissive policies attached to a resource, but you will be able to easily spot changes to permission policies. It will even show you policies to resources that are not being used. All of these features help to adhere to the security best practice of least privilege, ultimately improving resource and account security.
Quantum leaps with Amazon Braket
At the cutting edge of innovation and technology is the mystifying field of quantum computing. AWS is helping to advance the field of quantum technology by providing a managed service, Amazon Braket, that gives researchers and scientists a platform to easily develop, test, and run quantum algorithms. Amazon Braket offers the ability to create quantum algorithms or choose from predefined algorithms to get started quickly. Once the algorithm is defined, Amazon Braket will help validate the algorithm through a fully managed simulation service. Finally, there is the ability to run the algorithm on quantum hardware using the latest superconductor computers. Amazon Braket uses a hybrid model of classical computing to develop and validate quantum algorithms then move to production runs on quantum hardware. By using this innovative hybrid model, Amazon Braket helps to reduce cost of quantum research while providing an efficient end to end managed service.
Nitro Fueled Computing
Though AWS Nitro System was introduced last year, it seems that this technology stole the show at Monday Night Live. In particular Peter DeSantis, VP of AWS Global Infrastructure and Customer Support, described how innovations to the Nitro System are allowing for vast improvements to High-Performance Computing (HPC). 3rd generation Placement Groups Network (the network the HPC are placed on) improvements reach 10Pbps of data throughput. The Nitro Controller is needed to manage the immense amount of data used by HPC. Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) is a network stack that works with Nitro Controller to handle the network for data transfer. Peter shared examples of how the Nitro systems improve C5n for HPC, and P3dn for ML applications. These advancements, with the Nitro Controller at the center of it all, is making it possible to scale HPC applications to achieve ground breaking innovation at speeds never seen before.
Stay tuned for more magical announcements from AWS re:Invent 2019!