The project will highlight the importance of advanced data centres that can meet the demands of cutting-edge artificial intelligence applications. The expansion of the partnership between the two companies marks a significant step towards unlocking the true potential of artificial intelligence.

The plan is to have the supercomputer up and running by 2028, with initial information that it will be deployed in the US. The project is part of a multi-phase initiative with a horizon of six years. It is divided into five phases, with Stargate representing the final stage. Microsoft is currently developing a smaller supercomputer for OpenAI that will be released in 2026.

A significant amount of investment is also being devoted to the creation of Stargate and the provision of artificial intelligence chips, which are essential to the supercomputer’s functionality.

Stargate is poised to become a transformative leap in artificial intelligence infrastructure.

According to insiders, there is a high probability that the cost of creating the supercomputer will be over $115 billion, which is significantly more than Microsoft’s capital expenditure on infrastructure last year.

The partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI is a strategic move to maintain its leadership in AI innovation. By investing in the development of Stargate and collaborating with industry stakeholders, Microsoft seeks to push the boundaries of AI’s capabilities and pave the way for transformative advancements in a variety of fields.

During the Developer_Direct show we previously told you about, details were released of five new TOP titles that will be released on Xbox Series X|S, PC, Game Pass and/or cloud later this year. Joe Scrabbles, Xbox Wire’s Editor-in-Chief, tells us the details around them on the Microsoft blog.

Joe, who along with fellow team members attended the show, shares with readers that during the show guests had the opportunity to visit the studios that created the games Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Avowed, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and Ara: History Untold,.

The developers of the big name games in turn allowed attendees a glimpse into the workings of their creation.

Here’s what Joe Scrabbles has to say about the TOP games coming out this year

Avowed – launching in the fall of 2024

Game Director Carrie Patel shares details around gameplay in Obsidian’s upcoming fantasy action RPG – from the dynamic combat, to the thoughtful reactivity, to the “colorful, vibrant and strange” world in The Living Lands.

What you get from it is that Avowed continues Obsidian’s characteristic style of making games with deep themes and player choice at the forefront.

Avowed’s aim is to offer choice in combat as well. From gameplay director Gabe Paramo, we find out more about the game’s weapons and their variety – from melee weapons, guns and bows for long-range combat to magic wands. You’ll also have the option of changing gear.

Art director Matt Hansen makes it clear that The Living Lands is a mysterious island made up of extremely diverse regions that offer visually varied backgrounds and intriguing environments to explore. With secrets hidden in the regions, you’ll be introduced to deserts, verdant forests, volcanoes and more.

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II – launched on 21 May

Developer_Direct attendees get a behind-the-scenes look at the game’s studio in Cambridge to get a closer look at Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, and meet some of the team, as well as learn more about work on the new title, which is in its final months of development.
The video talks more about Senua’s new journey, which takes her to Iceland, a ruthless country ravaged by myth and tyranny. The video gives a new glimpse into Senua’s experience of the world, seen through her eyes as someone experiencing psychosis. Senua’s violent battles that she fights are also in view of the audience.

We also find out details about what players can expect from the game’s story and how the spatial audio will immerse players deep into the world of Hellblade.

Ara: History Untold – Launching Fall 2024

Oxide Games executives give an all-new look at the game, and also share more details around the major features that will appear in Ara: History Untold.

During the show, viewers had the opportunity to learn more details around the system the game was developed with, as well as the unique approach to simultaneous moves and more.

A curious fact
Did you know that the Oxide Games studio partially includes former Civilization developers? Oxide Games has announced that the game will only be released for PC for the time being.

Visions of Mana – Launching Summer 2024

In a surprise appearance, Square Enix joined the show to present Visions of Mana, the first new mainline entry in the series in over 15 years, and its debut on Xbox platforms. Series producer Masaru Oyamada presented a sneak peek at the gorgeous new RPG, sharing gameplay and behind the scenes footage before its launch in Summer 2024.

Koichi Ishii – father of the Mana series and creator of many of its iconic monsters – discussed the implementation and design of the enemies in Visions of Mana, and introduced the adorable new animal companions, “pikuls” and explained the design process behind them.

Oyamada then shared some details regarding the game’s score and revealed that the tracklist for Visions of Mana contains 100 songs in total, including works from musical talent who worked on previous Mana games. Oyamada also shared details of the adaptive music system that allows seamless transition from map exploration to battles, demonstrating a snippet of the background music changing as you enter or leave combat.

Oyamada also revealed that in Visions of Mana, The Elementals will assist the player in battle in the form of specialized items, which will each have a different effect in combat. Combined with aerial combat that allows for weapons and magic to be used in mid-air, the combat is fast-paced and flexible.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle – Launching 2024

The official reveal of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was debuted during Developer_Direct with over 13 minutes of gameplay footage and developer insights. This new journey starring the legendary archaeologist comes from the award-winning team at MachineGames – the minds behind Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus – in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games and executive produced by Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard.

According to GCHQ, the revelations surrounding the machine “shed new light on the genesis and workings of Colossus, which stood over two metres tall and is believed to be the first digital computer in history”, although much of the material about it in the National Archives remains classified.

The History

On January 18, 1944, British engineer Tommy Flowers arrived at Bletchley Park, a secret code breaking facility located about 50 miles north of London. He arrives in a lorry carrying a huge electronic machine that is immediately given the name “Colossus”.

There are claims that Colossus was the first ever digital computer used to crack messages between senior German commanders encrypted with the Lorenz cipher – details that remained secret until 2000.

The big secret until 2000.

Unlike its much more famous counterpart Bombe, designed by Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman and used to crack the Enigma codes, almost everything about Colossus was kept secret for almost six decades.

Although modern computers run on electronic circuits that function as logic gates – these days using tiny silicon semiconductors – in the 1940s, creating logic gates in this way was a pipe dream.

The genius Tommy Flowers

British engineer Tommy Flowers created logic gates for Colossus out of vacuum tubes – something that was only later adopted by ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrated Computing), which until the details of Colossus were revealed was thought to be the world’s first digital computer.

ENIAC and World War II

ENIAC was created in the United States during World War II with the original purpose of calculating ballistic tables for the needs of the US Army. It was constructed in 1945 by Americans John Moakley and J. It was founded in 1945 by John Mockley and John Presper Eckert.

The reasons for keeping the details of the computer secret are not yet known, although it has been suggested that Britain continued to export Lorenz cipher machines abroad until the 1960s. And the reason for this was Colossus’ ability to decrypt Lorenz messages.

“Technological innovation has always been at the heart of what we do at GCHQ and Colossus is a prime example of how our employees keep us at the forefront of new technology – even when we can’t talk about it,” commented Anne Kist-Butler, Director of GCHQ.

The British Cyber Intelligence Agency confirmed that, in part, “because the technology was so effective, its functionality was still in use by GCHQ until the early 1960s”.

‘No detailed user handbook’

In the press release accompanying the new documents, former GCHQ engineer Bill Marshall stated:

“I worked as an engineer on Colossus for a year during the 1960s. I had just signed the Official Secrets Act and knew nothing about GCHQ but was offered ‘interesting work’ which I believed would be dealing with telegrams for a government department.

I was told very little about the machine I was working on — what the machine was actually doing was not for me to know. My job was to repair it as necessary, using just a few circuit diagrams and no detailed user handbook. It wasn’t until much later that I found out that several of the systems and detailed design information were supposedly destroyed at the end of WWII.

I’m very proud to have been involved with Colossus even in just a small way, and we should all be proud of what was achieved in the name of national safety and security,” said Marshall.

After the war, eight of the ten Colossus machines were completely disassembled — although, of course, the engineers involved squirreled away the odd part and circuit diagram.”

The engineer Tony Sale led a rebuild of a working Colossus in the 1990s that was completed in 2007 and is currently housed at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.

“From a technical perspective, Colossus was an important precursor of the modern electronic digital computer, and many of those who used Colossus at Bletchley Park went on to become important pioneers and leaders of British computing in the decades following the war, often leading the world in their work” said Andrew Herbert, the chairman of trustees at the museum.

The most difficult part is to establish an objective measure of the importance of Colossus, which was used to “decipher critical strategic messages between top German generals, although a letter published by GCHQ links Colossus to “quite disturbing German instructions”.

The Importance of Colossus

By the time the machine was delivered to Bletchley Park, planning for the D-Day landings was already underway, but it is argued that the intercepts Colossus provided were valuable for giving the go-ahead on June 6.

As explained by Chris Shore in his excellent lecture on the device for The Centre for Computing History:

“Being able to launch that invasion in early June was absolutely crucial, and they needed that up-to-date intelligence.

On June the fifth, Eisenhower met with his generals to decide whether to go on June the sixth. As they were meeting, so the story goes — and I believe this story is corroborated — a courier arrived from Bletchley Park, walked into the room, and handed Eisenhower a folded piece of paper.

Eisenhower opened that and read it, and what he read was a message that had been decrypted by Colossus at Bletchley Park just a few hours earlier, from Hitler in Berlin to Rommel, commander of the Nazi forces on the Atlantic wall.

And that message stated Hitler’s categorical belief that yes, there would be an invasion in Normandy, but that it would be a diversion, and that the real invasion would happen five days later in Calais. And that message specifically refused Rommel permission to move his tank divisions from Calais to Normandy to reinforce his defenses.

This was exactly the intelligence that Eisenhower had been waiting for – confirmation that the Nazi command had been completely deceived as to the timing and location of the attack.

Eisenhower didn’t reveal what he had just read — he wasn’t allowed to because people weren’t allowed to know that we were reading the German’s communications — he folded the paper up, he looked around at the assembled group of generals and he said simply, ‘Gentlemen, we go tomorrow.’”

Today

“Technological innovation has always been at the center of our work here at GCHQ, and Colossus is a perfect example of how our staff keep us at the forefront of new technology – even when we can’t talk about it. The creativity, ingenuity and dedication shown by Tommy Flowers and his team to keep the country safe were as crucial to GCHQ then as today. I’m thrilled to be celebrating the 80th anniversary of this computer and honoring those who worked on it and then with it”, said Anne Kist-Butler, Director of GCHQ.

Did you know?

Despite using around 2,500 valves and standing at more than two metres tall, Colossus is considered by many to be the birth of modern-day computing and is still thought of today as the first digital computer ever made. Experts who worked on the code-breaking computer went onto to create the Manchester Baby built at the University of Manchester in 1948 – putting Manchester at the centre of a global computing revolution.

The news comes after Jenson Huang’s statement at the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference that “This year, every industry will become a technology industry.”

The talk, which took place in San Francisco, followed a J.P. Morgan conference presentation delivered by Kimberly Powell, NVIDIA’s vice president of healthcare. In her talk, Powell announced that Recursion is the first hosting partner to offer a foundation model through the NVIDIA BioNeMo cloud service, which goes into beta this month.

Drug Discovery with Generative AI and NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD

Kimberly Powell also shared that Amgen plans to advance drug discovery with generative AI and NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD – and that BioNeMo is being used by a growing number of technology companies, pharmaceutical companies, AI software providers and system integrators. These include Deloitte, Innophore, Insilico Medicine, OneAngstrom, Recursion and Terray Therapeutics.

From chip design to drug design

Healthcare customers and partners invest over a billion dollars in NVIDIA GPUs each year – directly and indirectly through cloud partners.

NVIDIA’s founder and CEO traced the company’s involvement in healthcare to two research projects that caught his attention some 15 years ago. One at Mass General used NVIDIA GPUs to reconstruct computed tomography images, and another at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign applied GPU acceleration to molecular dynamics.

“It opened my mind that we could apply the same methodology that we use in computer-aided chip design to help the world of drug discovery go from computer-aided drug discovery to computer-aided drug design,” he said, realizing that, “if we scale this up by a billion times, we could simulate biology.”

Jensen Huang further explains that after 40 years of advances in computer-aided chip design, engineers can now create complex computer systems entirely through simulation. In the next decade, the same may be true for AI-mediated drug discovery and design.

Collaborating on the Future of Drug Discovery and Medical Instruments
NVIDIA is propelling the field forward by building state-of-the-art AI models and powerful computing platforms, and by collaborating with domain experts and investing in techbio companies.

“We are determined to work with you to advance this field,” Huang said, inviting healthcare innovators to reach out to NVIDIA. “We deeply believe that this is going to be the future of the way that drugs will be discovered and designed.”

The company’s pipelines for accelerated healthcare include algorithms for cryo-electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography, gene sequencing, amino acid structure prediction and virtual drug molecule screening. And as AI advances, these computing tools are becoming much easier to access, Huang said.

Because of artificial intelligence and the groundbreaking work that our industry has done, we have closed the technology divide in a dramatic way,” he said. “Everybody is a programmer, and the programming language of the future is called ‘human.’”

“A medical instrument is never going to be the same again. Ultrasound systems, CT scan systems, all kinds of instruments — they’re always going to be a device plus a whole bunch of AIs. The value that will create, the opportunities you create, are going to be incredible”, Huang said.

Beyond drug development, this transformation to a software-defined, AI-driven industry will also advance medical instruments.

DeepMind claims to have made a new discovery that could lead to the creation of new materials for future technologies, Silicon Republic reports.

The company said that one of its artificial intelligence models has discovered 2.2 million new crystals, 380,000 of which could be used to create new materials that could drive various forms of technology.

“Our research boosted the discovery rate of materials stability prediction from around 50pc to 80pc – based on an external benchmark set by previous state-of-the-art models,” DeepMind said in a blog post.

According to DeepMind, these materials could be used to develop devices such as superconductors, supercomputers and next-generation batteries for electric vehicles. The company said it has provided researchers with the predictions of stable materials made by the artificial intelligence model.

“We also managed to scale up the efficiency of our model by improving the discovery rate from [less than] 10pc to [more than] 80pc – such efficiency increases could have significant impact on how much compute is required per discovery”, the company continued in the blog post.

The AI model, known as Graph Networks for Materials Exploration (Gnome), is denoted as a “graph neural network model.” It employs two distinct pipelines for the exploration of stable, low-energy materials.

According to DeepMind, one of these pipelines generates potential material candidates with structures resembling known crystals. The second pipeline takes a more experimental approach, employing a “randomized approach” based on chemical formulas.

The company states that the outputs from both pipelines undergo evaluation through “established density functional theory calculations” before being incorporated into the Gnome database.

DeepMind asserts that external researchers have successfully synthesized 736 novel materials in laboratories, leveraging predictions from the AI model. However, the company emphasizes that the realization of new technologies stemming from these materials hinges on our capability to effectively manufacture them.

“Our research – and that of collaborators at the Berkeley Lab, Google Research and teams around the world – shows the potential to use AI to guide materials discovery, experimentation and synthesis,” DeepMind said.

In the preceding year, DeepMind declared a significant scientific advancement as its AlphaFold model successfully predicted the structure of nearly every known protein in the scientific domain, totaling more than 200 million.

“The past year has brought to the world an almost unparalleled and diverse array of technological change. Advances in artificial intelligence are accelerating innovation and reshaping the way societies interact and operate. At the same time, cybercriminals and nation-state attackers have unleashed opposing initiatives and innovations that threaten security and stability in communities and countries around the world”, Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, wrote in a blog post.

The Secure Future Initiative consists of three main components: defences that use artificial intelligence, advances in software engineering, and international norms to protect civilians from cyber threats.

In the realm of artificial intelligence, the company aims to establish an “AI-powered cybersecurity barrier” geared towards safeguarding both customers and nations. The company is actively enhancing its internal protective capabilities, with the intention of applying these technologies directly to bolster customer security.

Furthermore, there are plans to leverage AI in addressing the existing shortage of cybersecurity professionals, which stands at approximately 3 million individuals. A key player in this endeavor is the Microsoft Security Copilot, utilizing AI for the detection and response to security threats. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint will also harness AI-driven detection mechanisms to enhance device security.

“As a company, we are committed to building an AI-based cyber shield that will protect customers and countries around the world. Our global network of AI-based datacenters and use of advanced foundation AI models puts us in a strong position to put AI to work to advance cybersecurity protection”, Smith wrote.

Microsoft is set to enhance its security stance against identity-based attacks by refining the user, device, and service verification procedures throughout its product range. To achieve this, Microsoft intends to transition to a novel key management system with an architecture that renders keys inaccessible in cases where the foundational security protocols are compromised.
The ultimate objective within this framework is to slash the time allocated to addressing vulnerabilities by half, all while promoting greater transparency in event reporting within the industry.

Lastly, the company is committed to promoting wider global adoption of security measures. This commitment follows the company’s establishment of the Digital Geneva Convention in 2017, which outlined a framework of “principles and norms governing the conduct of both state and non-state entities in cyberspace.” While acknowledging the progress made by many governments since then, the company believes that going forward, a more comprehensive and overarching commitment is imperative.

It’s no secret that one of the favorite things about .NET and C# developers are flexible. They can be used for applications ranging from desktop to web and mobile development. They are also an ideal choice for creating cloud applications.

Facts about .NET

• NET is a software development framework created by Microsoft that provides a platform for developing and running applications across several operating systems, such as Windows, macOS, and Linux.
• .NET was first introduced in 2000 and has since evolved into a set of powerful tools and frameworks for building modern and reliable applications.
• .NET supports a rich set of programming languages, including C#, Visual Basic, F#, and others.
• .NET has a large library of prebuilt classes and functions, known as the .NET Framework Class Library, which improves efficiency in application development.
• The .NET runtime is known as the Common Language Runtime (CLR), which manages the execution of .NET applications and provides features such as memory management, security, and exception handling.
• .NET is open source and cross-platform

Why is .NET development with C# gaining popularity among developers?

Cross-platform development
With C# and .NET, you can create applications that have the capability to run on multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and even on mobile with iOS and Android. You can reach a wide audience and build applications that can be used on different types of devices.

Integration with Microsoft products
Mastering C# and .NET makes it easier to develop and deploy applications on the Microsoft platform, which is ideal if you’re working for companies that rely heavily on technologies such as Azure and Visual Studio. These skills can also enable you to work on the future of AI models, such as Microsoft’s ChatGPT and Bing AI, which are increasingly gaining prominence in many industries today.

Scalability
C# and .NET are highly scalable technologies suitable for small and large applications, including desktop, web, game, and mobile apps, making them ideal for enterprise-level applications. This versatility also means that you can use these technologies to build any type of application to best suit your and your organization’s requirements.

High demand in the job market
C# and .NET developers are in high demand among startups and big tech companies alike. Employers are always seeking developers with expertise in .NET and C# since these technologies are now frequently used in enterprise-level applications. Given this demand, investing your time and effort in mastering these skills can set you apart and substantially increase your chances of securing employment, even in today’s uncertain economy.

Active community of developers
C# and .NET have a large and active developer community that provides a host of resources for learning and development, including online tutorials, forums, and documentation. So whether you’re a beginner or an experienced developer, you’ll be able to find ample support to help you learn and grow.

Easy to learn
C# is a relatively easy programming language to learn, especially if you are already familiar with other object-oriented programming languages such as Java or C++. Its simple syntax is designed to be both powerful and type-safe, so you can start creating applications quickly and efficiently without relying on a steep learning curve.

If you’re interested in a career with .NET, be sure to check out the opportunities here.

Today, we’ll take a look at some of the basic programming languages needed to develop Android apps, according to Analytics Insight. And while Kotlin is the official language of the platform, that doesn’t limit the use of other languages.

Basic Programming Languages for Android App Development

JavaScript
Did you know JavaScript is the most used language on the internet. The increase in popularity of frameworks like jQuery, Angular, Vue, Svelte, and React.Js has increased the popularity of JavaScript. The nice thing about JavaScript is that it is a language that can be used to design front-end GUIs, back-end servers, and even mobile apps. You may create cross-platform apps for iOS and Android mobile devices using the well-liked JavaScript framework React Native. JavaScript is a fantastic option due to its widespread appeal and popularity.

Java
Initially, Java served as the official language for developing Android apps (Kotlin has since taken its place), and as a result, it is also the most popular language. Java is the most supported language by Google and is used to create many apps in the Play Store. In addition to all of this, Java has a fantastic online community for help. The Android Software Development Kit (SDK) raises the degree of complexity. Java could be difficult for novices, who would rather get started with something simpler and return to it later.

Dart
Dart’s primary selling point is that Google created it as a client-optimized language for quick programs on any platform. Dart’s primary goal is to facilitate UI creation for programmers by using features like hot-reload, which enables programmers to view changes immediately as they are made to the application. Dart is renowned for quick performance and for compiling machine code for ARM and x64 for mobile, desktop, and backend. And for web applications, JavaScript.

The use of artificial intelligence in the creation of movies and TV shows – to write scripts, generate actor likenesses, or reduce the cost of creative work – has been the most contentious topic in negotiations between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and Sag and the Writers Guild of America (WGA).

The writers went on strike in May, with many popular actors including Tom Cruise and George Clooney joining earlier this month. It’s the first joint strike since the 1960s and threatens to change Hollywood forever.

The post, first reported by The Intercept, is something new that aims to “increase the use of our machine learning platform,” billed as “the foundation of all this innovation.” The post, however, lists vague qualifications related to machine learning, but hints at the company’s more far-reaching goals for artificial intelligence in “all areas of business.” A separate “machine learning” section on the company’s website says it will use AI to “shape our catalogue of films and TV shows by learning the features that make content successful”, and to “optimise the production of original films and TV shows”.

This isn’t the only new AI position sought by Netflix. The Intercept reported that the company is also looking to hire a technical director for generative AI at its game studio for a pay of up to $650,000 a year. Artificial intelligence can create text, images and video from input that can be used to create original content or for advertising purposes.

Earlier this month, Netflix premiered the new Spanish dating reality series “Deep Fake Love,” in which scans of participants’ faces and bodies are used to create “deepfake” simulations of themselves, and the company’s games division uses AI to create narratives and dialogue.

However, according to the AMPTP, the breakthrough of Artificial Intelligence across the film industry will change the perception of cinema forever and leave thousands of talented actors out of work, including celebrity darlings around the world.

“Fyrii’s mission is to make it easy for companies to build, manage, and monetize their developer and partner ecosystems,”

said Padma Subramanian, CEO of Fyrii.

It is a SaaS application that allows companies to:
– Build and manage the developer catalog and partner ecosystems.
– Profit from integrations developed by their ecosystem.
– Publish their application programming interfaces (APIs), use cases, and documentation directly at the point of creation.

The CEO also says that developers are a legitimate channel to market for most companies these days, but companies need help to succeed in their developer strategies, ecosystems and APIs.

The company will continue to enable its ecosystem to build many more such integrations and organically expand revenue opportunities for enterprises and developers within DEP.

Fyrii is just one example that proves how reusable integrations can create business value. More and more companies are taking an API-centric approach, and the opportunities to increase revenue and reduce costs through integrations will only increase.