Alexander Krock’s Post

Just sitting at the Las Vegas airport waiting for my delayed flight… Oracle's AI World took place here this week. There were so many announcements that it is hard to cover those in one post. I'll focus on what Clay (newly minted CEO of Oracle) announced.   Let's break it down. We introduce >>Acceleron<<, a foundational upgrade to OCI's core architecture. It comprises several innovations. A >>Converged NIC<< that integrates the host Network Interface Card (NIC) and Cloud Control Computer on a single silicon chip with hardware-enforced, static, hardware-level isolation. This design provides the security of a two-card system but with the superior performance and cost-efficiency of a single card.   Additional key innovations in Acceleron include:   >>Disintermediation<< This is the removal of intermediary elements in networking. Traditionally, advanced functions like network address translation (NAT) or peering rely on "middle boxes," which can be physical or virtual. While they provide essential functionality, they introduce drawbacks such as increased latency, performance bottlenecks, scaling challenges, and reduced overall availability. We eliminated these middle boxes entirely. This requires a highly flexible software architecture that seamlessly relocates network functions. We've invested years in developing this, and it's now deployed across many of our network systems.   The result: significantly lower costs, which we pass on to customers—explaining our competitive network fees through targeted engineering innovations like this. >>Zero-trust Packet Routing<< Traditionally, network architecture and security are deeply intertwined, complicating management and analysis. With zero-trust packet routing we decouple them: security policies are written in a dedicated language, while network design focuses purely on connectivity. This allows independent policy analysis, enhancing safety and usability. An example: To prevent data exfiltration from object storage, we can use a zipper policy to enable private database access to object storage for backups, and then use an IAM deny policy to prevent any usage of object storage except through that private access. The combination of these two policies prevents any usage of object storage from the internet, meaning even if someone stole credentials, they couldn't get the data out. So, Acceleron isn't just an incremental improvement. It’s a fundamental redesign of the OCI’s core, creating a faster, more secure, and more efficient foundation for everything that runs on OCI. Hence, our claim that Oracle's infrastructure has the highest performance, the lowest cost (comparable OCI services are 40-60% more cost-efficient than the other hyperscalers' offerings), and the most secure infrastructure.   That's it for now. I probably write a second update. Still a lot more to cover. #OracleAIWorld #Oracle #OCI #GenAI #CloudComputing #ArtificialIntelligence #EnterpriseAI #DataPlatform #Acceleron