Introducing Azure Load Testing: Optimize app performance at scale

Today, we are announcing the preview of Azure Load Testing. Azure Load Testing is a fully managed Azure service that enables developers and testers to generate high-scale load with custom Apache JMeter scripts and gain actionable insights to catch and fix performance bottlenecks at scale.

Application performance and resiliency are more important than ever before. As more businesses and services move toward digitization, the impact of outages and downtimes in lost revenue and customer dissatisfaction grows. Azure Load Testing is a service that can help testers and developers who are taking on a larger role in validating app quality, performance, and scalability.

Creating and managing the infrastructure required for load testing at scale can be time-consuming and complex. With Azure Load Testing, you can generate high-scale load without the need to manage complex infrastructure, and we have included Azure-specific integrations and insights so you can optimize your Azure application at scale.

You can get started with Azure Load Testing with this Quickstart that walks you through how to create and run your first load test.

Figure 1: Azure Load Testing architecture overview.

Learn how your application behaves under stress

Performance problems often remain undetected until an application is under load. We want to help development teams gain insight into how their application behaves under stress. You can start a high-scale load test in the Azure portal and see live updates of the client and server-side metrics while the test is running.

Azure-specific insights can help you understand how different load scenarios impact all the parts of your application, and you can compare test results across different load tests to understand behavior changes over time.

Azure Load Testing integrates with Azure Monitor, including Application insights and Container insights, to capture details from the Azure services. Depending on the type of service, different metrics are available. For example, the number of database reads, the type of HTTP responses, or container resource consumption. Both client-side and server-side metrics are available in the Azure Load Testing dashboard.

Figure 2: Get your performance insights across client and server with the Load Testing dashboard.

Build load testing into your CI/CD pipeline

Azure Load Testing is designed to help you integrate load testing into your continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflows so you can find performance issues before they happen in production. Using the integrations with GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines you can establish a performance baseline and set clear pass or fail criteria to catch performance regressions on every build.

Azure Load Testing will automatically abort an automated load test in response to specific error conditions. This behavior helps protect against failing tests further incurring costs, for example, because of an incorrectly configured endpoint URL, and is especially important for enabling automated testing.

Source: microsoft.com

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SONiC opens more opportunities for network innovation

SONiC, as an open-source operating system for network devices, has been growing rapidly in the last five years. According to Gartner Market Guide for Data Center Switching published early this year, they predict, “By 2025, 40 percent of organizations that operate large datacenter networks (more than 200 switches) will run SONiC in production environments.” And, “due to this rapidly expanding customer interest and commercial ecosystem, there is a strong possibility that, during the next three to six years, SONiC will become analogous to Linux as a server operating system, allowing enterprises to standardize on a NOS that is supported across hardware vendors.”

We have been working with many partners on innovations extending SONiC to new scenarios in the past year. Let’s look at what was showcased in the OCP Global Summit this month, and the opportunities SONiC enables.

Enable high-reliability dual ToR support with smart cable

High availability is a never-ending pursuit for network engineers. Delivering packets for customers without any glitch is a simple ask, however challenging to promise due to all sorts of possible failures on the path. Research shows the critical role of network infrastructure—each switch has a 2 percent chance of suffering a failure within three months of deployments, with 32 percent of failures attributed to hardware faults and 27 percent to unplanned power outages. The classical way to improve the reliability of a path is to add redundancy to reduce the impact of hardware failure. This year the SONiC community developed an innovative way to provide dual ToR (Top of Rack) connectivity to customer VMs. This SONiC-based approach does not require adding more NICs to the existing servers and avoids using the traditional MLAG (Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation) mechanism that is prone to split-brain failure. The secret goes inside the cable. Instead of the conventional Y cable, the new smart cable contains a microcontroller and a hitless MUX. The intelligence sits in the SONiC ToR switches. They manage the MUX inside the smart cable, determine the traffic path for the server, and handle failover rapidly. Measurements show this approach gives dual connectivity through a smart cable and SONiC switches with a failover time of less than 1µs. This capability is available in the SONiC 20201230 release. Microsoft, Broadcom, Credo, and many companies have contributed to this.

Figure 1: Dual ToR support through smart cable and SONiC switches.

DASH enables limitless networking

The programmable hardware ecosystem (smart NIC, smart ToR, smart appliance) has been booming in the last two years and will continue to grow. The performance and customizability of such devices are outstanding. This year, the SONiC community has launched a new workstream—DASH (Disaggregated APIs for SONiC Hosts)—to capitalize this for limitless networking. The initial goal is to improve the L4 performance and connection scale of Software Defined Networking operations by 10 times to 100 times over software implementation solutions. DASH leverages modern high-speed SmartNIC hardware to accelerate the flow processing, changing the game of implementing the data plane of SDN. The first set of overlay and underlay SAI APIs for VNET-to-VNET connectivity have been defined, and the test design is under active discussion. We foresee many applications that will benefit from DASH innovation, for example, encryption gateways with high-speed inline encryption and key management, load balancers, service tunneling, and more. The open-source nature of SONiC enables the flexibility to customize for individual use cases. We standardize APIs through SAI (Switch Abstraction Interface) to ensure interoperability across various programmable hardware. The solution inherits comprehensive monitoring, diagnostic capacity, reliability such as hitless upgrades and management of containers from SONiC for free. Nvidia, Pensando, Intel, and many partners are actively contributing to the program.

Figure 2: Seven initial DASH scenarios.

PINS—extending SONiC with programmability

There are two ways to run the network—distributed or centralized; each has its strength. In the distributed model, each switch has the intelligence to discover neighbors, build the routing table, and react to topology changes. Such a network can scale and self-heal rapidly if there is a failure. In the centralized model, a dedicated external control system builds up the topology and programs onto switch nodes in the network. The network behavior is deterministic, easy to debug, and enables optimal traffic engineering. In the past year, the PINS (P4 Integrated Network Stack) community and the SONiC community have been working together to integrate SONiC with PINS. This enables a customer to build an SDN (Software Defined Network) centrally controlled network with SONiC switches. The SDN controller programs the network devices, SONiC switches, through P4 with behavior model or contract defined by P4Runtime, which enables extensions to the runtime. This initiative allows SONiC users to have many choices to build their network with a rich hardware ecosystem. The minimum viable product will be in the SONiC 20211130 release, with more L2/L3 functionalities coming in the following releases.

Source: microsoft.com

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Advancing service resilience in Azure Active Directory with its backup authentication service

The most critical promise of our identity services is ensuring that every user can access the apps and services they need without interruption. We’ve been strengthening this promise to you through a multi-layered approach, leading to our improved promise of 99.99 percent authentication uptime for Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). Today, I am excited to share a deep dive into generally available technology that allows Azure AD to achieve even higher levels of resiliency.

The Azure AD backup authentication service transparently and automatically handles authentications for supported workloads when the primary Azure AD service is unavailable. It adds an additional layer of resilience on top of the multiple levels of redundancy in Azure AD. You can think of it as a backup generator or uninterrupted power supply designed to provide additional fault tolerance while staying completely transparent and automatic to you. This system operates in the Microsoft cloud but on separate and decorrelated systems and network paths from the primary Azure AD system. This means that it can continue to operate in case of service, network, or capacity issues across many Azure AD and dependent Azure services.

What workloads are covered by the service?

This service has been protecting Outlook Web Access and SharePoint Online workloads since 2019. Earlier this year we completed backup support for applications running on desktops and mobile devices, or “native” apps. All Microsoft native apps including Office 365 and Teams, plus non-Microsoft and customer-owned applications running natively on devices are now covered. No special action or configuration changes are required to receive the backup authentication coverage.

Starting at the end of 2021, we will begin rolling out support for more web-based applications. We will be phasing in apps using Open ID Connect, starting with Microsoft web apps like Teams Online and Office 365, followed by customer-owned web apps that use Open ID Connect and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML).

How does the service work?

When a failure of the Azure AD primary service is detected, the backup authentication service automatically engages, allowing the user’s applications to keep working. As the primary service recovers, authentication requests are re-routed back to the primary Azure AD service. The backup authentication service operates in two modes:

◉ Normal mode: The backup service stores essential authentication data during normal operating conditions. Successful authentication responses from Azure AD to dependent apps generate session-specific data that is securely stored by the backup service for up to three days. The authentication data is specific to a device-user-app-resource combination and represents a snapshot of a successful authentication at a point in time.

◉ Outage mode: Any time an authentication request fails unexpectedly, the Azure AD gateway automatically routes it to the backup service. It then authenticates the request, verifies artifacts presented are valid (such as, refresh token, and session cookie), and looks for a strict session match in the previously stored data. An authentication response, consistent with what the primary Azure AD system would have generated, is then sent to the application. Upon recovery, traffic is dynamically re-routed back to the primary Azure AD service.

Routing to the backup service is automatic and its authentication responses are consistent with those usually coming from the primary Azure AD service. This means that the protection kicks in with no need for application modifications, nor manual intervention.

Note that the priority of the backup authentication service is to keep user productivity alive for access to an app or resource where authentication was recently granted. This happens to be most of the type of requests to Azure AD—93 percent, in fact. “New” authentications beyond the three-day storage window, where access was not recently granted on the user’s current device, are not currently supported during outages, but most users access their most important applications daily from a consistent device.

How are security policies and access compliance enforced during an outage?

The backup authentication service continuously monitors security events which affect user access to keep accounts secure, even if these events are detected right before an outage. It uses Continuous Access Evaluation to ensure the sessions that are no longer valid are revoked immediately. Examples of security events that would cause the backup service to restrict access during an outage include changes to device state, account disablement, account deletion, access being revoked by an admin, or detection of a high user risk event. Only once the primary authentication service has been restored would a user with a security event be able to regain access.

In addition, the backup authentication service enforces Conditional Access policies. Policies are re-evaluated by the backup service before granting access during an outage to determine which policies apply and whether the required controls for applicable policies like multi-factor authentication (MFA) have been satisfied. If an authentication request is received by the backup service and a control like MFA has not been satisfied, then that authentication would be blocked.

Conditional Access policies that rely on conditions such as user, application, device platform, and IP address are enforced using real-time data as detected by the backup authentication service. However, certain policy conditions (such as sign-in risk and role membership) cannot be evaluated in real-time, and are evaluated based on resilience settings. Resilience defaults enable Azure AD to safely maximize productivity when a condition (such as group membership) is not available in real-time during an outage. The service will evaluate a policy assuming that the condition has not changed since the latest access just before the outage.

While we highly recommend customers to keep resilience defaults enabled, there may be some scenarios where admins would rather block access during an outage when a Conditional Access condition cannot be evaluated in real-time. For these rare cases, administrators can disable resilience defaults per policy within Conditional Access. If resilience defaults are disabled by policy, the backup authentication service will not serve requests that are subject to real-time policy conditions, meaning those users may be blocked by a primary Azure AD outage.

Source: microsoft.com

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Microsoft expands cloud services with two new datacenters in Wyoming

Today, I’m thrilled to share that we are announcing the launch of two new Microsoft datacenters in Cheyenne, Wyoming—one in Cheyenne Business Parkway and another in Bison Business Park—enabling us to expand and support the growth and demand for our digital services in our West Central US datacenter region. Cheyenne has been home to Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure services since 2012 and this expansion will enable us to continue providing services to current and new customers.

The two new datacenters will be built with sustainable design and operations in mind contributing to Microsoft’s commitment to being carbon negative. We’re engaging in significant efforts towards water conservation and preserving Cheyenne’s water resources is a top priority for us. Our current and new datacenters will use adiabatic cooling, which uses outside air instead of water for cooling when temperatures are below 85 degrees Fahrenheit. This process uses less electricity and up to 90 percent less water than other water-based cooling systems. We’ve already invested over $500K in sustainability grants to local organizations that help preserve Wyoming’s natural environment including Crow Creek Revival that aims to promote, enhance, restore, and revitalize the region’s key watershed.

Not only will our datacenters be built with sustainability top of mind, but Microsoft’s presence in Wyoming will also have a real economic and community impact on the residents. We currently employ over 200 employees and vendors in the region and this expansion will enable us to create even more jobs for the community, including more than 700 positions during peak construction. In addition to building datacenters, Microsoft is investing in new water, sewer, and road infrastructure to create easier access to Bison Business Park, which will also support the growth of new businesses in Wyoming.

“The growth of the data center industry in Wyoming has been led by Microsoft and it is coming to represent a significant sign of the continued diversification of our economy. I appreciate Microsoft's commitment to Wyoming and thank them for the benefits they have brought to multiple sectors of our economy,” said Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon. “Governor Mead was the inspiration for bringing the first Microsoft Data Center to the state in 2012. The incentives that set this train in motion are working. This is a sector of our growing economy that continues to pick up steam. More and more companies are looking to build in Wyoming in the coming years.”

“Additional datacenters are a great win for Cheyenne and all of Laramie County,” said Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins. “With it comes more high tech opportunities, a skilled workforce, and expands upon Microsoft’s existing economic impact to our community.”

Expanding Microsoft’s digital capabilities in Wyoming will allow us to meet the demand for new and existing customers in the region, and we’re excited to continue supporting the growth of diverse businesses in the state and look forward to working with state and local leaders on initiatives that can foster job creation and economic opportunity.

Investing in the community

Through Microsoft TechSpark and our Datacenter Community Development program we’ve worked closely with Wyoming organizations to create solutions that can benefit the state.

◉ K12 computer science opportunity: We’ve partnered with the Wyoming Department of Education to host ongoing computer science training for more than 30 school districts across the state, impacting more than 60,000 K-12 students. We’re also collaborating with Code.org and the University of Wyoming to build the capacity of hundreds of K12 teachers to offer computer science education to thousands of students across the state. Microsoft’s TEALS high school computer science program has also partnered with six Wyoming high schools to build high-quality computer science education for approximately 500 students in Laramie, Gillette, Douglas, Casper, and Buffalo.

◉ Quality job creation: Microsoft has invested over $500K to build a technology sector in Wyoming that focuses on job creation, workforce development and fosters the Wyoming startup community. Through a startup accelerator, named “gBETA Cheyenne”, we’ve helped 15 Wyoming startups raise nearly $3 million in investment capital to grow their companies and local technology jobs. We’ve also sponsored startup competitions in Laramie, Cheyenne and the Wind River Reservation to bring attention and mentoring to budding Wyoming startups.

◉ Increasing broadband access: We’re focused on making the internet more accessible for the communities which makes way for even more educational and economic opportunities. That’s why we’ve invested over $350,000 to launch free WiFi at key community locations such as the Downtown Cheyenne Depot, COMEA Shelter, and two Laramie County Public Library locations, helping more than 100,000 visitors and residents annually stay connected. Through Microsoft’s Airband program, we’ve also partnered with Vistabeam to provide increased broadband access to 116,600 Wyomingites in the region, including a previously unserved rural population of 19,000 that had no access to broadband.

◉ Upskilling opportunities: We’ve invested over a million dollars to launch three adult upskilling programs to help respond to COVID-19 challenges, including a Microsoft Datacenter Academy at Laramie County Community College, a tech apprenticeship program with the Array School of Technology and Design, as well as the Upskill Wyoming program. These opportunities provide Wyoming citizens with scholarships and upskilling opportunities that allow them to pursue better-paying remote and in-region jobs.

Source: microsoft.com

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Discover what’s new to Microsoft database services—recap from Microsoft Ignite

Whether it’s SQL Server, Azure SQL, open source, or NoSQL, Microsoft’s database services are here to help you build cloud-native applications or modernize existing applications with fully managed, flexible databases.

Last week at Microsoft Ignite, there were many announcements to help organizations regardless of where they are in their modernization journey. Our team is invested, and I want to share how these announcements are helping us reach every customer on the planet, modernize existing applications, and provide limitless database scale and performance for new applications.

Reach every customer on the planet

We announced the preview of SQL Server 2022, the most Azure-enabled SQL Server release yet. This enables easier cloud integration than ever before with new disaster recovery functionality for Azure SQL Managed Instance and seamless analytics over on-premises operational data with Synapse Link for SQL Server. We continue to enhance the database engine including new security capabilities like SQL Server Ledger, and built-in query intelligence with Query Store and the third generation of Intelligent Query Processing enhancements.

In addition to announcing a new version of SQL Server, we have new capabilities in Azure Arc. With Azure Arc-enabled data services, including SQL Managed Instance and PostgreSQL Hyperscale, you can get evergreen, managed services anywhere you are. Last week, we announced the general availability of point-in-time-restore (PITR) and in-place upgrade for Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance. There’s also a new Microsoft Learn module if you’re new to running Azure services anywhere.

Modernize existing applications

Azure is the best destination for SQL Server, and more and more customers are running SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines. Recently, we’ve added new and improved SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines marketplace images. The new images have updated configurations to adhere to the latest best practices, along with a new deployment experience that allows you to customize settings, such as MAXDOP and collation, according to your needs. Even more, SQL Assessments have arrived in preview so you can keep your SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine healthy. You can schedule assessments, run an assessment on-demand, and view assessment results directly from the SQL virtual machine blade in the Azure portal.

Azure SQL Managed Instance had several key announcements, including hardware offers with significantly more memory per vCore (up to 13.6 GB per vCore) and increased storage up to 16 TB in both the general purpose (general availability) and business critical (preview) service tiers, providing more room for app growth. Also, the new Link feature for Azure SQL Managed Instance enables SQL Server customers to use Azure SQL Managed Instance for disaster recovery and restore Azure SQL Managed Instance databases to SQL Server. Details about other highly anticipated capabilities that are now available like Windows (Kerberos) Authentication (limited preview), AAD only authentication, AAD authentication for Linked Server, BULK INSERT and BACKUP / RESTORE with Managed Identity credentials, distributed transactions between SQL Managed Instances, and much more.

When it comes to open source, Flexible Server, which is available for Azure Database for MySQL (now generally available) and for Azure Database for PostgreSQL (preview) is a new deployment option that is hosted using native Linux and designed to provide more granular control and flexibility. Flexible Server provides for maximum control of your databases, high availability options to ensure zero data loss, built-in capabilities for cost optimization, and increased productivity enabled by integrations with Azure ecosystem. Flexible Server also supports customer-requested capabilities like custom maintenance windows, zone redundant high availability, and cost optimization features like burstable compute, start stop and reserved instances. It’s no surprise that the customer adoption has been so strong.

Last week, we also announced the general availability of Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra providing the ability to provision managed native Apache Cassandra clusters, with automated deployment and scaling operations, accelerating hybrid scenarios and reducing ongoing maintenance.

Provide limitless database scale and performance

In the NoSQL space, Azure Cosmos DB is a fully managed NoSQL database built to support production applications at any size or scale. At Microsoft Ignite, we released many new capabilities such as partial document updates, provisioned throughput maximums, and cost-savings recommendations in Azure Advisor—all generally available. In addition, Azure Synapse Link custom partitioning, Cassandra API server-side retries, and a Logic App connector are now in preview. 

Part of the Azure SQL family, Azure SQL Database is an intelligent and scalable relational database built for the cloud. With serverless compute and Hyperscale storage options that automatically scale resources on demand, we’re enabling you to focus on building applications. Last week, we released configurable differential backups as generally available and introduced memory grant feedback improvements in preview.

Last but certainly not least, we announced the general availability of Postgres 14 on Azure’s Hyperscale (Citus) option. This may be the first time a major cloud provider has announced the general availability for a new Postgres major version on their platform one day after the official release. We also shipped the Citus 10.2 open source release and made it available in Hyperscale (Citus) in the Azure portal. Another key announcement is Azure Private Link support for Hyperscale (Citus) (preview): you can now connect your Hyperscale (Citus) nodes to the Azure virtual network securely and privately.

Source: microsoft.com

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Microsoft and AT&T are accelerating the enterprise customer’s journey to the edge with 5G

Today, we find ourselves at a pivotal moment that’s impacting many enterprise customers’ digital transformation needs. In this place where cloud meets the edge, compute meets mobile, and 5G trends continue to drive innovation—customer demand for advanced network capabilities is surging. For customers, the promise of all these converging technologies is still the ability to create and use innovative solutions and experiences to keep pace with a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

As a result, enterprises are migrating mission-critical workloads to the cloud to better serve their customers. The technologies that are involved are complex, and companies are looking to providers to not merely sell them products, but to help them deliver innovation while developing ever-greater capabilities. With new use cases and connected devices becoming ubiquitous, those enterprises are requiring new edge application solutions close to the end users to help them build innovative solutions within industries as diverse as gaming, automotive, healthcare, manufacturing, and more.

Sign up for the Azure Edge Zones with AT&T private preview today.

Microsoft and AT&T’s deep collaboration meets these needs by supporting our mutual customers’ digital transformation and evolution. We’re bringing our collective cloud and network technologies and expertise to light in areas such as 5G, AI, and IoT—to improve the ways in which people live and work.

We’ve already made considerable progress. In June, we hit a major milestone when we announced an industry-first collaboration to adopt Microsoft cloud technology for AT&T’s 5G core network workloads. This enables AT&T to increase productivity, reduce costs, and deliver innovative services that meet its customers’ evolving needs. We’re also leading development of new solutions that will help enterprises lower costs while increasing efficiency, reliability, and security at the edge of their premises and facilities through capabilities such as AT&T-enabled Azure Sphere and Guardian module, and AT&T MEC with Azure.

Microsoft Azure is available in more than 60 regions, more than any other cloud provider, making it easy for enterprises to choose the datacenter and regions that are right for them and their customers. For densely populated metros where enterprises need low-latency compute resources, we extend the capability of Azure to the operator’s 5G network edge. Azure Edge Zones with AT&T can dramatically improve an application’s performance while reducing overhead and complexity for enterprise customers. A selected set of Azure services deployed at the edge, directly connected to AT&T’s 5G core, enables latency-sensitive enterprise scenarios through optimized routing from the Azure Edge Zones with AT&T to the AT&T mobility network. This enables developers to innovate richer applications with lower latency, higher throughput, and greater reach.

Journey to the mobile network edge

Innovative enterprise customers are exploring ways to combine 5G’s next-generation network capabilities with the power of applications deployed closer to the customer at the network edge. For example, in music, we’re enabling new experiences not previously possible, through virtual jam sessions that offer an experience like musicians playing side by side—reducing latency and unleashing creativity. Working with JamKazam to power audio and video streaming for musicians online, AT&T’s low-latency solution, using the edge and 5G helped the band The Perfect Nines to jam without the constraints of crowded home wi-fi networks. Check out the JamKazam video to learn more. In another example, the AT&T 5G Innovation Studio collaborated with Microsoft Azure and EVA to deliver an important advancement for U.S. based autonomous drones. By creating a unique test environment representative of the Microsoft Azure Edge Zone with AT&T, the low latency of 5G combined with EVA’s app deployed at the network edge with Azure cloud services enabled autonomous drone control beyond visual line of sight.

Powerful relationships can also provide numerous benefits to consumers, as evidenced by General Motors recent collaboration with AT&T, supported by Microsoft’s cloud services—which will improve the quality of in-vehicle experience for drivers by offering improved roadway-centric coverage, higher quality music and video downloads, more reliable and secure over-the-air software updates, as well as faster navigation, mapping, and voice services.

Following the successful proof of concept in Los Angeles and the other positive developments noted above, we are excited about our Azure Edge Zones with AT&T private preview in Atlanta. Azure Edge Zones with AT&T in Dallas and other metros will soon follow. The momentum is building, and your imagination is the only limit to future offerings. With Microsoft and AT&T’s strategic collaboration, customers can unlock low-latency enterprise applications well beyond the traditional network and create the smart cities, roadways, and skyways of the future.

“The power of 5G is about more than just speed. It’s about harnessing ultra-fast and ultra-responsive connectivity to distributed cloud technology for entirely new experiences. As compute expands beyond centralized systems and out to the edge of the 5G network, companies and consumers now essentially have supercomputer capabilities in the air around them. From lightweight virtual reality interfaces that can be used by anyone from gamers to first responders, to hyper-precise location tools for industrial applications and warehousing, the edge is transformative. Our deep collaboration with Microsoft is designed to help customers make that leap and start creating the future.”—Andre Fuetsch, Chief Technology Officer, AT&T Network Services

We invite organizations of all sizes and from every segment to create joint experiments that unlock the capabilities enabled by Azure services at the Edge, connected through AT&T’s 5G network. From using drones over 5G to support public safety and traffic management efforts, to remote patient care, in-car autonomous safety response, and high-performance mobile gaming, the possibilities are endless.

Source: microsoft.com

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Bringing commercial innovations in chip design to national security

Semiconductors and microelectronics are some of the most important components in building cutting-edge capabilities for our national security and defense technologies, from satellites and radar to vehicles and communications equipment. Ensuring these components are developed with the utmost regard for security is a critical, yet challenging task. Historically, the security requirements associated with developing microelectronics have limited the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) ability to leverage the latest innovations.

Through a recent DoD-sponsored project, Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes (RAMP) using Advanced Commercial Capabilities, the goal is to leverage commercial best practices to help accelerate the development process and bring reliable, secure state-of-the-art microelectronic design and manufacturing to national security and defense applications. The DoD recently announced it has selected Microsoft to support the second phase of this project.

This project builds on a 40-year history of collaboration between Microsoft and the U.S. DoD, to bring commercial innovation to the national security community. Microsoft previously led a coalition of partners in collaborating with the DoD on the first phase of this initiative: to develop design capabilities that achieve the department’s mission priorities. In this second phase, Microsoft and our partners will build on these successful designs and begin to develop custom integrated chips and System on a Chip (SoC) designs using a secure, collaborative design flow that provides access to advanced manufacturing processes. These new designs will achieve lower power consumption, improved performance, reduced physical size, and improved reliability for application in DoD systems.

Microsoft has engaged microelectronics industry leaders across the commercial and defense industrial base (DIB) to develop this phase of the RAMP project, collaborators include Ansys, Applied Materials, Inc., BAE Systems, Battelle Memorial Institute, Cadence Design Systems, Cliosoft, Inc., Flex Logix, GlobalFoundries, Intel Federal, Raytheon Intelligence and Space, Siemens EDA, Synopsys, Inc., Tortuga Logic, and Zero ASIC Corporation.

The RAMP solution will provide an advanced microelectronics development platform for mission-critical applications, with cloud, AI, and machine learning-enabled automation, security, and quantifiable assurance. This solution will be hosted in Azure Government, offering the broadest range of commercial innovation for governments with services available across all U.S. data classifications.

RAMP is a critical initiative that will enable the DoD to leverage a secure, scalable microelectronic supply chain, while also ensuring the design and manufacturing meets its stringent security and compliance requirements. By leveraging cloud-based secure design capabilities, RAMP will expand the number of foundries available to DoD, enhance resiliency, and foster growth of the domestic semiconductor supply chain. The success of RAMP will also enable the department to be more agile with technology developments, quickly adapt to evolving needs, and adopt the latest technological capabilities. We look forward to continuing our work with the DoD and our industry partners to deliver groundbreaking, transformative solutions to secure the microelectronic supply chain.

Source: microsoft.com

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