Amazon Textract is a machine learning service that automatically extracts text, handwriting, and data from scanned documents and goes beyond simple optical character recognition (OCR) to identify, understand, and extract data from forms and tables.

Starting today, memory optimized Amazon EC2 X2iezn instances are available. Amazon EC2 X2iezn instances are powered by 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors with an all core turbo frequency of up to 4.5 GHz, the fastest in the cloud. X2iezn instances deliver the highest all-core turbo CPU performance from Intel Xeon Scalable processors in the cloud, and deliver up to 55% better compute price performance than X1e instances. They are a great fit for electronic design automation (EDA) workloads as well as relational databases that benefit from high single-threaded processor performance and a large memory footprint. The combination of high single-threaded compute performance and a 32:1 ratio of memory to vCPU make X2iezn instances an ideal fit for EDA workloads including physical verification, static timing analysis, power sign-off, and full chip gate level simulation, and database workloads that are license bounded. 

Amazon EC2 R5b instances are now available in AWS Asia Pacific (Seoul) Region. R5b instances are powered by the AWS Nitro System and offer up to 60 Gbps of EBS bandwidth and 260,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS), enabling customers to lift and shift memory intensive applications to AWS. R5b instances provide 3x higher EBS-Optimized performance compared to R5 instances and 2x higher EBS-Optimized performance compared to R6i instances. 

In 2022, Japan and Singapore have the world’s most powerful passports says the Henley Passport Index. Holders of these passports can enter 192 countries without applying for and receiving a visa beforehand. South Korea and Germany follow with visa-free travel to 190 jurisdictions. U.S. passport holders can travel to 186 countries without major restrictions – …

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I’ll file this one under ‘Gadget In-Extremis’ but really it’s just an excuse to highlight an amazing video: a timelapsed capture of the James Webb Space Telescope’s journey from sea and land to space (on Christmas Day)…

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Thanks to IC Insights for this one – the top 25 fastest growing chip companies:

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Sonos alleged that Google’s smart speaker devices infringed its US patents, and the ITC has agreed. But who will be the winner from this patent dispute, asks Michael Jaeger, a partner and patent attorney at Withers & Rogers? Following the conclusion of a long-standing legal battle, Sonos has emerged victorious to block the import into the …

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Weebit Nano has demo-ed its first operational crossbar arrays, a key milestone on the Company’s path to creating discrete (stand-alone) non-volatile memory (NVM) chips. The 1T1R (one transistor one resistor) architecture used in embedded ReRAM arrays is not sufficient to support the large arrays of memory cells needed in discrete memory chips. For this reason, Weebit’s …

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Next year Panasonic plans to start mass production of a battery which will give a Tesla Model S a range of  750km – up from 650km at the moment. The new battery will have five times the capacity of the previous battery and will be twice as big and, costed on a capacity basis, be 10-20% …

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The European Space Agency (ESA) and European Union (EU) will be holding a Space Summit in February to identify how best to boost Europe’s space ambitions. It will consider how best space-related technology can address environmental, economic and security challenges, says the ESA. Specifically, EU strategies for secure connectivity and for space traffic management. Taking …

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