Weekly Cloud Info #W15 - 2025

Author

Walid LARABI
April 12, 2025

Hi!

This week’s newsletter is landing a bit late — blame it on a well-deserved vacation! 🌴

But don’t worry, I’ve packed it with exciting updates and fresh news from the cloud and AI world.

Have a great read. ☕

📰 Top picks of the week

Google Introduces Ironwood TPUs and new innovations in AI Hypercomputer

Google Cloud introduced Ironwood TPUs, its 7th generation hardware, designed for AI workloads with 5x more compute capacity and 2x the power efficiency of the previous generation. The new AI Hypercomputer integrates advanced hardware to optimize performance and reduce costs for AI tasks. Additionally, A4 and A4X VMs featuring NVIDIA GPUs are now available, and improved networking capabilities offer up to 4x more bandwidth. These innovations aim to deliver higher intelligence per dollar for users.

Configuring GPU in your Cloud Run service is now generally available (GA)

Google Cloud Run now supports NVIDIA L4 GPUs for AI inference and other compute-intensive workloads. Users can configure one GPU per instance, with quick start times of around 5 seconds. All GPU usage requires a quota request, instance-based billing, and has specific regional availability. Pricing details and considerations for zonal redundancy in case of outages are also provided.

Meta Unveils Llama 4 Series: Best-In-Class Models with 17 Billion Parameters

Meta announced its new Llama 4 series over the weekend, featuring three models: Llama 4 Scout, Maverick, and Behemoth. The Scout model, with 17 billion parameters, is touted as the best multimodal model in its class, supporting 10 million token context windows. Maverick also has 17 billion parameters and outperforms competitors like GPT-4o in benchmarks. The models aim to push the limits of AI performance and usability.

AWS Reduces Amazon S3 Express One Zone Prices by Up to 85% Effective April 2025

AWS has announced significant price reductions for the Amazon S3 Express One Zone storage class, effective April 10, 2025. Storage prices will drop by 31%, and request prices will see reductions of up to 85%. This high-performance storage option is ideal for data-intensive applications and supports enhanced features like object expiration and real-time data appending. Available in multiple regions, these changes aim to optimize costs and improve performance for users.

AWS Launches Amazon Nova Sonic for Human-like Voice Conversations

Amazon has launched Amazon Nova Sonic, a new foundation model that simplifies the creation of voice-enabled applications by unifying speech understanding and generation. This integrated approach enhances customer experiences with human-like conversations and low latency. At launch, it supports American and British English, with plans for additional languages. It includes features for tool use, allowing interaction with external services, and incorporates responsible AI measures.

AWS Launches MCP Servers to Speed Up Development with AI Integration

AWS has released its open-source MCP Servers for code assistants, designed to integrate AWS best practices into developers' workflows. These specialized servers provide guidance on service configurations, security, and cost optimization, helping to accelerate development with AI. They can address common coding challenges through automated tasks, allowing developers to focus on innovation. This is part one of a series exploring the capabilities of AWS MCP Servers.

AWS SES Now Supports Email Attachments for Easier Rich Content Delivery

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) now supports email attachments through its simple sending v2 APIs. Users can easily add documents like PDFs and images without the need for complex email structure management. This feature is available across all AWS regions where SES operates. It simplifies the process of sending rich email content.

Microsoft Copilot in Azure: Now Live with Enhanced Features at No Extra Cost!

Microsoft Copilot in Azure is now generally available, offering an AI-powered tool to enhance productivity with Azure. It utilizes Large Language Models and insights about your Azure environment for improved efficiency. The features are available at no extra cost, but excessive use may lead to throttling. Copilot supports comprehensive localization across all Azure portal languages.

Azure Introduces ACLs for Fine-Grained Access Control in Blob Storage SFTP

Azure Blob Storage now offers Access Control Lists (ACLs) for SFTP local users, enabling administrators to manage access to blobs and directories more precisely. Users can authenticate with either a password or SSH private key, with a limit of 25,000 local users per storage account. ACLs allow fine-grained access control, like restricting access to specific directories, which simplifies management for multiple users. Administrators can set and modify permissions directly through an SFTP client.

GitHub Introduces Security Campaigns to Boost Developer-Security Collaboration

GitHub Advanced Security now offers security campaigns to enhance collaboration between security teams and developers. Available in the Copilot Autofix tool, these campaigns help manage security risks and reduce remediation time by up to 60%. The feature also allows for automatic updates on GitHub issues and provides aggregated statistics on campaign progress. Security managers can generate code suggestions for up to 1,000 scanning alerts simultaneously.

❤️ You might also like

- "Nvidia’s H20 AI chips may be spared from export controls" LINK

- "Google takes on Cursor with Firebase Studio, its AI builder for vibe coding" LINK

- "OpenAI’s GPT helps spammers send blast of 80,000 messages that bypassed filters" LINK

- "Google says it’ll embrace Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to data" LINK

- "Microsoft says its slowing or pausing some AI data center projects, including $1B plan for Ohio" LINK

- "Europe unveils plan to become ‘AI continent’ with simpler rules, more infrastructure" LINK

- "Amazon says its AI video model can now generate minutes-long clips" LINK

- "UK makes first 250-mile quantum video call using entangled light for encryption" LINK

- "OpenAI plans GPT-5 release in 'a few months,' shifts strategy on reasoning models" LINK

- "Microsoft updates Copilot with the greatest hits from other AIs" LINK

- "Google Cloud Next 2025 Event Underway" LINK

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