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AMD-based servers support enterprise applications — and break OLTP records

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AMD-based servers support enterprise applications — and break OLTP records

AMD EPYC server processors are designed to help your data-center customers get their workloads done faster and with fewer computing resources.

 

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AMD EPYC™ server processors are designed to help your data-center customers get their workloads done faster and with fewer computing resources.

AMD EPYC server processors offer a consistent set of features across a range of choices from 8 to 96 cores. This balanced set of resources found in AMD EPYC processors lets your customers right-size server configurations to fit their workloads.

What’s more, these AMD CPUs include models that offer high per-core performance optimized for frequency-sensitive and single-threaded workloads. This can help reduce the TCO for core-based software licenses.

AMD introduced the 4th Generation AMD EPYC processors in late 2022. The first of this generation are the AMD EPYC 9004 series CPUs. They’ve been designed to support performance and efficiency, help keep data secure, and use the latest industry features and architectures.

AMD continues to ship and support the previous 3rd Generation AMD EPYC 7002 and 7003 series processors. These processors power servers that are now available from a long list of leading hardware suppliers, including Supermicro.

Record-breaking

Good as all that may sound, you and your customers still need hard evidence that AMD processors can truly speed up their enterprise applications. Well, a new independent test of AMD-based Supermicro servers has provided just that.

The test was performed by the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA), an IT standardization association based in Seongnam, South Korea. The TTA tested several Supermicro database and web servers powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC 7343 processors.

The results: The Supermicro servers set a world record for performance by a non-cluster system of 507,802 transactions per minute (tpmC).

That test was conducted using the TPC Benchmark, which measures a server’s online transaction processing (OLTP) performance. The tpmC metric measures how many new-order transactions a system can generate in a minute while executing business transactions under specific response-time requirements.

What’s more, when compared with servers based on the previous 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors, the newer Supermicro servers were 33% faster, as shown in the chart below:

DATA: Telecommunications Technology Association

All that leads the TTA to conclude that Supermicro servers powered by the latest AMD processors “empower organizations to create deployments that deliver data insights faster than ever before.”

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1. https://www.tpc.org/1809

 

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Protect Customer Data Centers with AMD Infinity Guard

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Protect Customer Data Centers with AMD Infinity Guard

AMD’s 4th Gen EPYC server processors can keep your customers safe with Infinity Guard, a set of innovative and powerful security features.

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When AMD released its 4th generation EPYC server processors, the company also doubled down on its commitment to enterprise data-center security. AMD did so with a set of security features it calls AMD Infinity Guard.

The latest EPYC processors—previously code-named Genoa—include an array of silicon-level security assets designed to resist increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks.

CIOs and IT managers who deploy AMD’s latest security tech may sigh with relief as they sidestep mounting threats such as ransomware, malicious virtual machines (VMs) and hypervisor-based attacks like data replay and memory re-mapping.

Growing concerns

Hackers are relentless. Beguiled by the siren song of easy riches through cybercrime, they spend countless hours devising new ways to exploit even the slightest hardware vulnerability. The bigger the organization, the more money these cyber criminals can extort—which is why they often target enterprise data centers.

AMD took this into account when designing the EPYC server processor series. The company had three goals: to address hardware-level vulnerabilities, eliminate likely threat vectors, and deny hackers access to any surface they could exploit.

Perhaps just as vital, AMD set a goal of addressing security concerns without impacting system performance. This is especially important for modern application workloads that require both high performance and low latency.

For instance, organizations that offer streaming content and mass storage could be just as easily crushed by glitches and malfunctions as they could by a significant security breach.

Security tech within

AMD is taking a decidedly ain’t-messin’-around approach to its latest security tech. Rather than paying lip service to IT Ops’ concerns, AMD engineers went deep down into the heart of their processor architecture to identify and remedy threat vectors.

The impressive security portfolio includes 4 primary tools to guard against threats:

  • Secure Encrypted Virtualization: SEV provides individual encryption for every virtual machine on a given server. Each VM is assigned one of up to 509 unique encryption keys known only to the processor. This protects data confidentiality in the event that a malicious VM breaches a system’s memory, or a compromised hypervisor reaches into a guest VM.
  • Secure Memory Encryption: Full memory encryption protects against internal and physical attacks such as the dreaded cold boot attack. There, an attacker with physical access to a computer conducts a memory dump by performing a hard reset of the target machine. SME ensures that the data remains encrypted even if the main memory is physically removed from a server.
  • Secure Boot: To help mitigate the threat of malware, AMD EPYC processors employ an embedded security checkpoint called a “root of trust.” This validates the initial BIOS software boot without corruption.
  • Shadow Stack: It may sound like a Marvel superhero, but in fact this guards against threat vectors such as return-oriented programming (ROP) attacks. Shadow Stack does this by compiling a record of return addresses so a comparison can be made to help ensure software-code integrity.

A well-rounded engine

A modern server processor serves many masters. While addressing security concerns is vitally important, so are ensuring high performance, impressive energy efficiency and a decent return on investment (ROI).

Your customers may appreciate knowing that AMD’s latest EPYC processor series addresses these factors. Rather than focusing solely on headline-grabbing tech like speeds & feeds, AMD took a more holistic approach, addressing many issues endemic to modern data-center operations.

EPYC CPUs also boast broad ecosystem support. For AMD, this means fostering collaboration with a network of solution providers. And for your customers, this means worry-free migration and seamless integration with their existing x86 infrastructures.

Your data-center customers are probably concerned about security. Who isn’t, these days? So talk to them about AMD Infinity Guard. After all, a secure customer is a happy customer.

 

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For Greener Data Centers, Look to Energy-Efficient Components

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For Greener Data Centers, Look to Energy-Efficient Components

Energy-efficient systems can help your customers lower their data-center costs while supporting a cleaner environment. 

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Creating a more energy-efficient data center isn’t only good for the environment, but also a great way for your customers to lower their total cost of ownership (TCO).

In many organizations, the IT department is the single biggest consumer of power. Data centers are filled with power-hungry components, including servers, storage devices, air conditioning and cooling systems.

The average data center uses anywhere from 2 to 4 Terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity per year. That works out to nearly 3% of total global energy use, according to Supermicro. Looking ahead, that’s forecast to reach as high as 8% by 2030.

One important measure of data-center efficiency is Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). It’s calculated by taking the total electricity in a data center and dividing it by the electricity used by center’s IT components. The difference is how much electricity is being used for cooling, lighting and other non-IT components.

The lower a data center’s PUE, the better. The most energy-efficient data centers have a PUE of 1.0 or lower. The average PUE worldwide last year was 1.55, says the Uptime Institute, a benchmarking organization. That marked a slight improvement over 2021, when the average PUE was 1.57.

Costly power

All that power is expensive, too. Among the short list of ways your customers can lower that cost, moving to energy-efficient server CPUs is especially effective.

For example, AMD says that 11 servers based on of its 4th gen AMD EPYC processors can use up to 29% less power a year than the 17 servers based on competitive CPUs required to handle the same workload volume. And that can help reduce an organization’s capital expenditures by up to 46%, according to AMD.

As that example shows, CPUs with more cores can also reduce power needs by handling the same workloads with fewer physical servers.

Yes, a high-core CPU typically consumes more power than one with fewer cores, especially when run at the same frequency. But by handling more workload volume, a high-core CPU lets your customer do the same or more work with fewer racks. That can also reduce the real estate footprint and lower the need for cooling.

Greener tactics

Other tactics can contribute to a greener data center, too.

One approach involves what Supermicro calls a “disaggregated” server architecture. Essentially, this means that a server’s subsystems—including its CPU, memory and storage—can be upgraded without having to replace the entire chassis. For a double benefit, this lowers TCO while reducing E-waste.

Another approach involves designing servers that can share certain resources, such as power supplies and fans. This can lower power needs by up to 10%, Supermicro says.

Yet another approach is designing servers for maximum airflow, another Supermicro feature. This allows the CPU to operate at higher temperatures, reducing the need for air cooling.

It can also lower the load on a server’s fans. That’s a big deal, because a server’s fans can consume up to 15% of its total power.

Supermicro is also designing systems for liquid cooling. This allows a server’s fan to run at a lower speed, reducing its power needs. Liquid cooling can also lower the need for air conditioning, which in turn lowers PUE.

Liquid cooling functions similarly to a car’s radiator system. It’s basically a circular system involving an external “chiller” that cools the liquid and a series of pipes. The liquid is pumped to run through one or more pipes over a server’s CPU and GPU. The heat from those components warms the liquid. Then the now-hot liquid is sent back to the chiller for cooling and then recirculation.

Green vendors

Leading suppliers can help you help your customers go green.

AMD, for one, has pledged itself to delivering a 30x increase in energy efficiency for its processors and accelerators by 2025. That should translate into a 97% reduction in energy use per computation.

Similarly, Supermicro is working hard to help customers create green data centers. The company participates in industry consortia focused on new cooling alternatives and is a leader in the Liquid Cooling Standing Working Group of The Green Grid, a membership organization that fosters energy-efficient data centers.

Supermicro also offers products using its disaggregated rack-scale design approach to offer higher efficiency and lower costs.

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What are Your Server Customers Looking For? It Depends on Who They Are

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What are Your Server Customers Looking For? It Depends on Who They Are

While hyperscalers and enterprises both buy servers powered by the latest CPUs, their purchase decisions are based on very different criteria. Knowing who you’re selling to, and what they’re looking for, can make all the difference.

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Think all buyers of servers powered by the latest-generation CPUs are all looking for the same thing? Think again.
 
It pays to think of these customers as falling into one of two major groups. On the one hand are the so-called hyperscalers, those large providers of public cloud services. On the other are CIOs and other IT executives at large enterprises who are looking to improve their on-premises data centers. 
 
Customers in both groups are serious buyers of the latest, greatest servers. But their buying criteria? Two very different things.
 
Hyperscalers: TCO, x86, VM
 
When it comes to cutting-edge servers, hyperscalers including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are attracted to the cost advantage.
 
As Mark Papermaster, chief technology officer at AMD, explained in a recent technology conference sponsored by Morgan Stanley, “For the hyperscalers, new server processors are an easy transition. Because they’re massive buyers, hyperscalers see the TCO [total cost of ownership] advantage.”
 
Hyperscalers also like the fact that most if not all new server CPUs still adhere to the x86 family of instruction-set architectures. “For their workloads,” Papermaster said, “it lifts and shifts.”
 
Big hyperscalers are also big implementers of containers and virtual machines. That’s an efficient workload application for today’s high-density CPUs. The higher the CPU density, the more VMs can be supported on a single server. 
 
For example, AMD’s 4th gen EPYC processors (formerly code-named Genoa) pack in 96 cores, or 50% more than the previous generation. That kind of density suits hyperscalers well, because they have such extensive inventories of VMs.
 
Enterprise CIOs: different priorities
 
For CIOs and other enterprise IT executives, server priorities and buying criteria are quite different. These buyers are looking mainly for ease of migration, broad ecosystem support, robust security and energy efficiency (which can also be a component of TCO). 
 
CIOs also need to keep their CFOs and boards happy, so they’re also looking for a clear and easily explainable return on investment (ROI). They may also need to tie this calculation to their organization’s strategic goals. For example, if a company were looking to increase its market share, the CIO might want to explain how purchasing new servers could help achieve that goal. 
 
One relatively new and increasingly important priority is energy efficiency. Enterprises increasingly need to demonstrate their support for “green” initiatives. One way a company can do that is by showing how their computer technology gets more done with less electric power.
 
Also, many data centers are already receiving as much electric power as they’re configured for. In other words, they can’t add power to get more work done. But they can add energy-efficient servers able to get more work done with the same or even less power than the systems they replace.
 
A third group, too
 
During his recent Morgan Stanley presentation, Papermaster of AMD also discussed a third group of server buyers: Organizations with hybrid IT orchestrations, both cloud and on-premises, that want the ability to move workloads back and forth. Essentially, this means mimicking the cloud in an on-prem environment.
 
Looking ahead, Papermaster discussed a forthcoming EPYC processor, code-named Bergamo, which he said is “right on track” to ship in this year’s first half. 
 
The new CPU will be aimed at cloud-native applications that need high levels of both throughput and per-socket performance. As previously announced, Bergamo will have up to 128 “Zen 4c” cores, and will come with the same software and security features as Genoa. 
 
“We listen to our customers,” Papermaster said, “and we see where workloads are going.” That’s a good practice for channel partners, too.
 
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Research Roundup: Cloud Infrastructure, 9 Trends for Tech Providers, Euro IT Spending, RPA

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Research Roundup: Cloud Infrastructure, 9 Trends for Tech Providers, Euro IT Spending, RPA

Check out the latest analysis and forecasts from top IT market researchers. 

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Cloud infrastructure spending is growing, but at a slower pace. Nine trends will have a huge impact on tech providers. European business leaders say they won’t let even a recession stop them from spending on tech. And RPA is forecast for fast growth.

That’s some of the latest analysis and forecasts from top IT market researchers. Here’s your research roundup.

Cloud Infrastructure Spending: Rising, But More Slowly  

Spending on cloud infrastructure grew 23% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2022, for a worldwide total of $65.8 billion, according to market watcher Canalys.

Impressive as that growth may sound, it represents a slowdown from the previous quarter. In last year’s third quarter, cloud-infrastructure spending worldwide rose by 34% year-on-year, an 11-point difference.

Three main factors were behind the dip, Canalys says. First was rising public-cloud costs, fueled by inflation, which encouraged organizations to review, and in some cases reduce, their spending. Second was uncertainty over the economy. And a third was “repatriation,” the act of taking certain workloads from the public cloud and returning them to private or co-location data centers.

By supplier, the cloud infrastructure market remained dominated by three big names, according to Canalys. In Q4:22, AWS led with a 32% market share, followed by Microsoft Azure (23%) and Google Cloud (10%). That left miscellaneous “others” with a collective 35% share.

9 Top Trends for Tech Providers

Nine trends will matter for tech providers through 2025, predicts research firm Gartner. These trends reflect 3 overarching themes: the increasing reliance of businesses on technology; new opportunities emerging through tech; and the impact of external macro forces. “The march of digitization continues even amidst disruption,” says Gartner researcher Rajesh Kandaswamy.

Here are Gartner’s top 9 trends for tech providers:

1. Democratization of Technology: Organizations are empowering non-IT workers to seek, implement and custom-fit their own tech.

2. Federated Enterprise Tech Buying: Buying decisions are increasingly made not by IT alone, but instead by representatives across the business.

3. Product-led Growth: This go-to-market strategy lets customers gain value via free product offers and interactive demos.

4. Co-innovation Ecosystems: Businesses and their tech providers collaborate to create unique, innovative solutions.

5. Digital Marketplaces: These help both technical and nontechnical buyers find, buy, implement and integrate technologies with ease.

6. Intelligent Applications: Advanced technologies such as generative AI create value and disrupt markets by learning, adapting and generating new ideas and outcomes.

7. Metaverse/Web3: Virtual environments are gaining traction as organizations look to create unique experiences, interactions and engagements.

8. Sustainability: Customers increasingly view sustainable products and practices as a “must have” rather than just a “nice to have.”

9. Techno-Nationalism: Selected regional markets are becoming more localized as new governmental policies aim for digital sovereignty.

Euro IT Spending: What Recession?

The European technology market is huge and growing.

Total IT spending in Europe will hit $1.2 trillion this year, predicts IDC. Looking ahead, the market intelligence firm expects that figure to top $1.4 trillion by 2026.

For the years 2021 to 2026, total IT spending in Europe will represent a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.4%, IDC expects. For this year alone, IDC predicts the year-on-year spending rise will be a somewhat lower 4.2%.

One remarkable aspect is that the forecasted spending rise comes as most European business leaders expect a recession. Nonetheless, IT spending will remain high, says IDC researcher Zsolt Simon, because European business leaders “regard technology investments as a means of gaining a competitive edge.”

By industry, banking remains Europe’s largest spender on IT, representing nearly 14% of all, says IDC. Looking ahead a few years, IDC expects the fastest-growing spender between now and 2026 will be professional services.

RPA Market Forecast: 40% Growth

Robotic process automation—software that makes it easy to build, deploy and manage software robots—is more than just a good idea. It’s also a booming market.

RPA sales worldwide will total $30.85 billion by 2030, representing a CAGR of nearly 40%, according to forecasts by Grand View Research.

New RPA sales will be driven primarily by customers looking to lower their operating costs, Grand View expects. But other goals for RPA include improved compliance and higher worker productivity.

In addition, the technology has gotten easier to use, even for complex processes. That should make RPA more attractive to potential customers, and more useful for them too.

 

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Learn, Earn and Win with AMD Arena

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Learn, Earn and Win with AMD Arena

Channel partners can learn about AMD products and technologies at the AMD Arena site. It’s your site for AMD partner training courses, redeemable points and much more.

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Interested in learning more about AMD products while also earning points you can redeem for valuable merch? Then check out the AMD Arena site.

There, you can:

  • Stay current on the latest AMD products with training courses, sales tools, webinars and quizzes;
  • Earn points, unlock levels and secure your place in the leaderboard;
  • Redeem those points for valuable products, experiences and merchandise in the AMD Rewards store.

Registering for AMD Arena is quick, easy and free. Once you’re in, you’ll have an Arena Dashboard as your control center. It’s where you can control your profile, begin a mission, track your progress, and view your collection of badges.

Missions are made of learning objectives that take you through training courses, sales tools, webinars and quizzes. Complete a mission, and you can earn points, badges and chips; unlock levels; and climb the leaderboard.

The more missions you complete, the more rewards you’ll earn. These include points you can redeem for merchandise, experiences and more from the AMD Arena Rewards Store.

Courses galore

Training courses are at the heart of the AMD Arena site. Here are just 3 of the many training courses waiting for you now:

  • AMD EPYC Processor Tool: Leverage the AMD processor-selector and total cost of ownership (TCO) tools to match your customers’ needs with the right AMD EPYC processor.
  • AMD EPYC Processor – Myth Busters: Get help fighting the myths and misconceptions around these powerful CPUs. Then show your data-center customers the way AMD EPYC delivers performance, security and scalability.

Get started

There’s lots more training in AMD Arena, too. The site supports virtually all AMD products across all business segments. So you can learn about both products you already sell as well as new products you’d like to cross-sell in the future.

To learn more, you can take this short training course: Introducing AMD Arena. In just 10 minutes, this course covers how to register for an AMD Arena account, use the Dashboard, complete missions and earn rewards.

Ready to learn, earn and win with AMD Arena? Visit AMD Arena now. 

 

 

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Part 4: The Web3 and Blockchain FAQ

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Part 4: The Web3 and Blockchain FAQ

This is the last in a four-part series on blockchain’s many facets, including being the primary pillar of the emerging Web3.

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Part 1: First There Was Blockchain  |  Part 2: Delving Deeper into Blockchain  |  Part 3: Web3 Emerging

No matter how much information an article offers, sometimes you just want a fast, detail-complete answer to your burning question. Here’s nine more answers. We hope the answers to these frequently asked questions — along with the other three parts of the series — address any nagging Web3 and Blockchain questions you may have.

 

QUESTION: Is Web3, a methodology, a set of principles, a change in the way we do business, a trend, an idea, a philosophy, a fad?

 

ANSWER: I think Web3 is both philosophical and technical. Philosophical because awareness concerns over data privacy are growing with a few large entities gaining control of the lion’s share of data; prompting the desire for more decentralization. Technical processing and data storage is moved to the edge and decentralized with Web3, and networking is in a peer-to-peer architecture. Hence the catchphrase the edge is the new cloud. I think Web3 is the new Internet, and it's very disruptive. —Eric Frazier, senior solutions manager, Supermicro

 

 

QUESTION: What are the key benefits of Web3?

 

ANSWER:

1. Decentralization (peer to peer network and anyone can be connected with anyone directly

2. Trustless (no intermediary/middleman)

3. Permissionless (anyone can participate without authorization from a governing body

—Jörg Roskowetz, director product management blockchain technology, AMD

 

 

QUESTION: How should the data center of an enterprise be equipped to handle blockchain?

 

ANSWER 1: A tier 3 data center with proper redundancy is highly recommended as well as consistent bandwidth at 10 Gig minimum with 100 Gig recommended. —Michael Fair, chief revenue officer and longtime channel expert, PiKNiK

 

ANSWER 2: Typically, workstations with complementary GPU coprocessors. —Frazier

 

 

 

QUESTION: What are the benefits of NFTs?

 

ANSWER: There are several, here are the three more significant benefits: 

1. NFTs preserve the information necessary to support collection of royalties, even after multiple resales, with the proper smart contracts in place.

 

2. NFT’s could lead to the development and growth of a completely new creator economy in which music, video, art, book creators would be in control of their content sales, merchandising, they might even get tokenized payments for fan interaction and avoid any need to transfer ownership to platforms that publicize their content. The long line of business “partners” with their hands out awaiting their cut could be a thing of the past.

 

3. Inclusive growth: As NFTs bring content creators together into a shared market, a democratization of valuation will most likely occur that will benefit all participants.

—Frazier and Scot Finnie, managing editor, Performance-Intensive Computing

 

 

QUESTION: Does Blockchain or Web3 improve security?

 

ANSWER  1: First, Web3 user-to-platform interactions are confidential and anonymous, both in principle and in practice. This lets individuals realize their self-sovereignty and be assured of the security of their private information. Plus, Web3’s decentralized structure offers inherent security benefits because it eliminates the single point of failure. Blockchains are also composed of several built-in security qualities, such as cryptography, public and private keys, software-mediated consensus, contracts and identity controls. Bitcoin has not been hacked since its inception because the Bitcoin blockchain is constantly reviewed by the entire network. —Frazier

 

ANSWER  2: Blockchain-based data storage can defeat some types of ransomware, where the data itself is not sensitive but it is unique and irreplaceable. If your data storage system inherently gives you around-the-world redundancy that can survive flood, tornado, fire and so on, that’s increased data security. —Fair and Finnie

 

 

QUESTION: What are the advantages of storing enterprise data in a blockchain cloud storage service?

 

ANSWER: The value proposition for using a service like PiKNiK Web3 Cloud Storage is based on the following differences from traditional cloud storage providers:

1. Significantly lower costs

2. Immutability.  The blockchain monitors the data stored and reports back regularly to the customer verifying that the data has not been altered in any way. This is a free service; it’s part of the blockchain protocol.

3. Extra copies can be made anywhere in the world upon customer request. — Fair

 

 

QUESTION: What enterprise applications and make good sense for organizations to implement with blockchain?

 

ANSWER: An InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) storage system, supply chain, logistics, IP protection, licensing --Frazier and Roskowetz

 

 

QUESTION: What is the InterPlanetary File System and why does it matter?

 

ANSWER: The InterPlanetary File System was created by Juan Benet and was initially released as an alpha build in early 2015 (Wikipedia). Benet also founded Protocol Labs and is a Web3 advocate. It is believed that Benet was inspired for various aspects of the code by GitHub, BitTorrent and an MIT Distributed Hash Table (DHT). The DHT assigns a 24-digit immutable hash to identify content by name instead of by location. IPFS may be thought of as a replacement for the location-based addressing scheme that has underpinned the Web for 30 years—the HTTP protocol, written by Tim Berners-Lee. One of the key aspects of IPFS is that works like BitTorrent to leverage downloads by peers to preserve bandwidth. IPFS is a key piece of Web3 architecture. —Finnie

 

 

QUESTION: What are “dapps” (decentralized apps)?

 

ANSWER: Rich MacManus, writing for the New Stack, concluded that the problem with Web3 is dapps. It stands for decentralized app. Apparently, backend coding for a dapp is very different from traditional app coding and focuses on communication with smart contracts. What’s a dapp? Dapps serve the same purpose as apps written for other platforms except that they’re designed to run in a blockchain environment. For a recent list of top 10 Dapps see Geekflare. —Finnie

 

 

Other Stories in this Series:

Part 1: First There Was Blockchain

Part 2: Delving Deeper into Blockchain

Part 3: Web3 Emerging

Part 4: The Web3 and Blockchain FAQ

 

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Where Are Blockchain and Web3 Taking Us? — Part 3: Web3 Emerging

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Where Are Blockchain and Web3 Taking Us? — Part 3: Web3 Emerging

This is the third in a four-part series on blockchain’s many facets, including being the primary pillar of the emerging Web3.

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Part 1: First There Was Blockchain  |  Part 2: Delving Deeper into Blockchain  |  Part 4: The Web3 and Blockchain FAQ

Perhaps the most surprising aspect about Web3 is the DAO, an acronym that stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. A DAO is an emerging alternative type of organization that operates without centralized management. Instead, power is shared by token holders who cast votes in a bottom-up approach, according to Investopedia. Activity in the DAO is recorded on the blockchain, where it is open to all. Smart contracts form actions that help govern organizational process and policy. From the outside, a DAO appears to function similarly to a corporation; from the inside it is very different. There’s no CEO, COO or President. Instead, DAOs are often managed by governing bodies, although many rules are pre-determined by smart contracts. For real-world examples of DAOs, see this Forbes article.

 

So, What is Web3, Anyway?

 

Web3 (also spelled Web 3.0) is a name for the next evolution of the web, following Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. It is expected to be built on open-source software, blockchain, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), smart contracts and other Blockchain-related technologies. Gavin Wood, founded Polkadot, co-founded Ethereum and was the originator of the Web3 Foundation. Wood coined the term Web3 in a 2014 blog post.

 

Web3 is not to be confused with another effort to remake the Web, also known as the Semantic Web and sometimes called Web 3.0.  The Semantic Web dates back to 1999, when Tim Berners-Lee coined the phrase, according to Wikipedia. The Semantic Web’s primary goal is to extend the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make the meaning of internet data machine-readable.

 

In April 2022, speaking to CNBC International, Wood defined Web3 “as an alternative vision of the web, where the services we use are not hosted by a single service provider but instead are purely algorithmic. They are in some sense hosted by everybody” in peer-to-peer fashion. “The idea being that all participants contribute a small slice of the ultimate service. No one really has any advantage over anyone else, not in the same sense at least as when you go to Amazon, eBay or Facebook, for example, where the company providing the service has power over how” that service is rendered and how your data are handled. In summing up, Wood said: “Web3 is about reducing the trust needed to use the internet services we use every day.”

 

Still Early Days

 

Web3 is available in test-tube fashion today. A basic form of the tech stack can be cobbled together using the Ethereum blockchain, it’s challenging and still doesn’t create the seamless end-user experience that it is hoped will describe the eventual product set.

 

The Web3 Foundation and others are working on different aspects of Web3.  Visit the Web3 Foundation for a look at Wood’s Web3 Technology Stack diagram.

 

The diagram describes the end-user software as a “protocol-extensible user-interface cradle ("browser")” that “a user would use to interact directly with the blockchain without needing to know implementation details. Examples include Status, MetaMask or MyCrypto.”

 

Web3 leaders would do well to remember that it was the user interface in the form of the Mosaic web browser that exploded, making the advent world-wide web content a certain thing. Available in public beta since earlier that year, Mosaic 1.0 released for Windows in November 1993. Just a year earlier, in November 1992, there were only 26 websites in the world (Wikipedia).

 

Juan Benet, founder, ceo, engineer of Protocol Labs, and creator of Filecoin and IPFS, is another key Web3 visionary who is tracking the user experience. In 2018, he gave a speech at the Web3 Summit called What Exactly Is Web3? Among other things, he spoke about browsers and the Web3 user interface: “Web 3.0 browsers are very different. Some look like existing browsers and they browse the web that way. Some are a single webpage that that connects you to the blockchain and lets you [initiate] transactions. Some are [“Web3 wallets”]. And some are extensions to your existing browser that add capabilities. We don’t really know what the browser of Web3 ought to be. We don’t have good usability yet. It’s a major challenge.”

 

Fervor

 

Web3 is a call to action for a user movement — like the user movement to PCs; like the movement to the world-wide web. When very large numbers of users insist upon a specific change, change happens. You don’t have to be clairvoyant to see that end-user security and privacy in the US has been severely compromised by our own intelligence agencies, big tech companies and foreign countries. It’s a bubbling pot waiting to boil over. How long before users demand a change?

 

There’s a fervor you sense from some of the people behind Web3 that you may not immediately understand. Blockchain is an open source-based system. It’s based on a P2P approach, which eliminates intervention from other parties, such as large tech companies, each of which controls access to a huge block of users. They have an overlapping monopoly on the personally identifiable data of millions of people. Web3 seeks to use a new web technology stack, blockchain and user crypto wallets to give back the ownership of such data to its users. For many the prospect of using blockchain technology and Web3 principles to take back user privacy is empowering.

 

For a well-written and comprehensive primer of Web3, see Ethereum’s Introduction to Web3.

 

 

Other Stories in this Series:

Part 1: First There Was Blockchain

Part 2: Delving Deeper into Blockchain

Part 3: Web3 Emerging

Part 4: The Web3 and Blockchain FAQ

 

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Where Are Blockchain and Web3 Taking Us? — Part 2: Delving Deeper into Blockchain

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Where Are Blockchain and Web3 Taking Us? — Part 2: Delving Deeper into Blockchain

This is the second in a four-part series on blockchain’s many facets, including being the primary pillar of the emerging Web3.

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  • Applications:

Part 1: First There Was Blockchain  |  Part 3: Web3 Emerging  |  Part 4: The Web3 and Blockchain FAQ

To get a sound understanding of blockchain, you should be aware of some of the nagging issues and criticisms. For example, blockchain has no governance. It could really use the guidance of a small representative group of industry visionaries to help it chart a course, but that might lead to a more centralized orientation. You should also familiarize yourself with the related tools and technologies and what they do. NFTs, in particular, work hand in hand with blockchain and add protection for those who create.

 

Getting NFTs

 

It has been effectively open season on digital content on the internet from the get-go. DRM technology didn’t solve the problem. Will the non-fungible token (NFT) make inroads? Its long-term success or lack thereof will largely be dependent on the success of blockchain. Make no mistake, blockchain is here to stay. It’s too useful a tool to leave behind. But Web3’s premise — that blockchain-based servers might someday run the internet — is by no means certain. (Come back for Part 3 which explores Web3.)

 

What are NFTs? “NFTs facilitate non-fraudulent trade for digital asset producers and consumers or collectors,” said Eric Frazier, senior solutions manager, Supermicro.

 

An NFT is a digital asset authentication system located on a blockchain that gives the holder proof of ownership of digital creations. It does this via metadata that make each NFT unique. Plus, no two people can own the same NFT, which also can’t be changed or destroyed.

 

Applications include digital artwork, but an NFT (sometimes called a "nifty") can be used for a wide variety of uses in music, gaming, entertainment, popular culture items (such as sports merchandise), virtual real estate, prevention of counterfeit products, domain name provenance and others. Down the road, NFTs may have a significant effect on software licensing, intellectual property rights and copyright. Land registry, birth and death certificates, and many other types of records are also potential future beneficiaries of NFTs.

 

If you’re wondering whether NFTs can be traded for cryptocurrency, they can be. What they are not is interchangeable. You may have an NFT for a piece of art that was sold as multiple copies by its owner. But each of those NFTs has unique meta data, so they may not be exchanged one for the other.

 

Smart Contracts Execute

 

A smart contract is blockchain-based, self-executing contract containing code that runs automatically when predetermined conditions are met as set out in an agreement or transaction. So, a hypothetical example might be: on January 15, transfer X value of cryptocurrency in payment for a specific NFT owned by a specific person. Smart contracts are autonomous, trustless, traceable, transparent and irreversible. Key hallmarks of the Smart Contract are that they exclude intermediaries and third parties like lawyers and notaries. And they usually use simple language, require fewer steps and involve less paperwork.

 

Blockchain Power Consumption

 

Some blockchains gobble up electricity and are heavy users of compute and storage resources. But blockchains are not all created equally. Bitcoin is known to be resource in hungry, while “Filecoin’s needs are materially less,” said to Michael Fair, chief revenue officer and longtime channel expert, PiKNiK.

 

It’s also possible to make changes to some blockchains to make them less power hungry. For example, Ethereum switched from the Proof-of-Work (PoW) to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm a few months ago, which reduced power consumption by over 99%. However, Ethereum is less decentralized as a result because it is now 80% hosted on AWS. (See the discussion on Understanding Decentralized in Part 1.)

 

“With the algorithm switch from PoW to PoS, Ethereum’s decentralization took a big hit because the majority of transactions and validations are running on Amazon’s cloud” said Jörg Roskowetz, director of blockchain technology, AMD. “From my point of view, hybrid systems like Lightning on the Bitcoin network will keep all the parameters improving — scalability, latency and power-consumption challenges. This will likely take years to be developed and improved.

 

Can Web3 Remain Decentralized?

 

Is the blockchain movement viable going forward? There are those who are skeptical: For example, Scott Nover writing in Quartz and Moxie Marlinspike. Both stories were published almost a year ago in January 2022, well before the change at Ethereum.

 

Nover writes: “Even if blockchains are decentralized, the Web3 services that interact with them are controlled by a very small number of privately held companies. In fact, the industry emerging to support the decentralized web is highly consolidated, potentially undermining the promise of Web3.”

 

These are real concerns. But it’s not like the expectation was that Web3 would exist in a world free of potentially undermining factors, including the consolidation of Web3 blockchain companies as well as some interaction with Web 2.0 companies. If Web3 succeeds, it will need to support a good user experience and be resilient enough to develop additional ways of shielding tself from centralizing influences. It’s not going to exist in a vacuum.

 

 

Other Stories in this Series:

Part 1: First There Was Blockchain

Part 2: Delving Deeper into Blockchain

Part 3: Web3 Emerging

Part 4: The Web3 and Blockchain FAQ

 

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Where Are Blockchain and Web3 Taking Us? — Part 1: First There Was Blockchain

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Where Are Blockchain and Web3 Taking Us? — Part 1: First There Was Blockchain

This is the first story in a four-part series on blockchain’s many facets, including being the primary pillar of the emerging Web3. 

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  • Applications:

 |  Part 2: Delving Deeper into Blockchain  |  Part 3: Web3 Emerging  |  Part 4: The Web3 and Blockchain FAQ

There has been a lot of buzz about blockchain over the past five years, and yet seemingly not much movement. Long, long ago I concluded that the amount of truth to the reported value of a new technology was inversely proportional to the level of din its hype made. But as with so much else about blockchain, it defies conventional wisdom. Blockchain is a bigger deal than is generally realized.

 

Basic Blockchain Definition and Introduction

 

(Source: Wikipedia): Blockchain is a peer-to-peer (P2P) or publicly decentralized ledger (shared distributed database) that consists of blocks of data bound together with cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a time stamp and a transaction date. Because each block contains information from the previous block, they effectively form a chain – hence the name blockchain.

 

Blockchain transactions resist being altered once they are recorded because the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks that duplicate that data. As a P2P publicly distributed ledger, nodes collectively adhere to a consensus algorithm protocol to add and validate new transaction blocks.

 

“A blockchain is a system of recording information in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to change, cheat or hack the system,” said Eric Frazier, senior solutions manager, Supermicro. “It is a digital ledger that is duplicated and distributed to a network of multiple nodes on the blockchain.”

 

Michael Fair, PiKNiK’s chief revenue officer and longtime channel expert added, “In the blockchain, data is immutable. It’s actually sealed within the network, which is monitored by the blockchain 24 x 7 x 365 days a year.”

 

Blockchain was created in 2008 under the apparent pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. Its original use was to provide a public distributed ledger for the bitcoin cryptocurrency also created by the same entity. But the true promise of blockchain goes way beyond cryptocurrency. The downside is that blockchain operations are computationally intensive and tend to use lots of power. This issue will be covered in more detail later in the series.

 

Understanding “Decentralized”

 

The term decentralized is probably the most important tenet of Web3 and it is at least partially delivered by blockchain. The word has a specific set of meanings, although it’s become something of a buzzword, which tends to blur its meaning.

 

Gavin Wood is an Ethereum Cofounder, Polkadot founder and the person who coined the term Web3 in 2014. Based on comments made by Wood in a January 2022 YouTube video by CNBC International, as well as other sources, decentralized means that no one company’s servers exclusively own a crucial part of the internet. There are two related meanings for decentralized that get confused sometimes:

 

1. In its most basic form, decentralized is about keeping data safe from monopolization by using blockchain and other technologies to make data and content independent. Data in a blockchain is copied to servers all over the world, which cannot change that information unilaterally. There’s no one place that this data exists and that protects it. Blockchain makes it immutable.

 

2. Decentralized also means what Wood called “political decentralization,” wherein “no one will have the power to turn off content,” the way top execs could (in theory) at companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Twitter. Decentralization could potentially kick these and other companies out of the “Your Data” business. A key phrase that relates to this meaning of the term is highly consolidated. How many companies have Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook purchased over the past couple of decades? Google purchased YouTube. Facebook bought Instagram. Microsoft nabbed LinkedIn. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Where once there were many companies, now there are a few, very large companies exerting control over the internet. That’s what highly consolidated refers to. It’s term that’s often used to describe the opposite of decentralized.

 

Blockchain Uses

 

Since 2019 or so, new ideas for blockchain applications have arrived fast and furiously. And while many are plausible theories, others have been actively produced. If your company’s sector of the marketplace happens to be one of the areas that blockchain has been identified with, chances are good that blockchain is at least on your company’s radar.

 

Many organizations are looking to blockchain to rejuvenate their product pipelines. The future of blockchain will very likely be determined by technocrats and developers who harness it to chase profits. In other words, thousands of enterprises are developing blockchain products and services to their own needs, and if they succeed, many others will likely follow.

 

Beyond supporting cryptocurrency, three early uses of blockchain have been:

  • Financial services
  • Government use of blockchain for voting
  • Helping to keep track of supply chains. There’s a synergy in the way they work that makes blockchain and supply chain ideal for one another.

Blockchain has quickly spread to several areas of financial services like tokenizing assets and fiat currencies, P2P lending backed by assets, decentralized finance (DeFi) and self-enforcing smart contracts to name a few.

 

Blockchain voting could help put a stop to the corruption surrounding elections. Countries like Sierra Leone and Russia were early to it. But several other countries have tried it – including the U.S.

 

In healthcare, a handful of companies are attempting to revolutionize e-records by developing them on blockchain-based decentralized ledgers instead of stored away in some company’s database. The medical community is looking at it to store DNA information.

 

Storage systems are an early and important blockchain application. Companies like PiKNiK offer decentralized blockchain storage on a BTB basis.

 

Other Stories in this Series:

Part 1: First There Was Blockchain

Part 2: Delving Deeper into Blockchain

Part 3: Web3 Emerging

Part 4: The Web3 and Blockchain FAQ

 

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Events


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