Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. is committed to the hybrid computing model, and it intends to draw on its extensive network of partners to deliver it for customers.

Those were two of the clear messages from HPE Discover in Las Vegas this month as the company consolidated numerous services within its GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform and highlighted collaborations with major industry players, such as Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Amazon Web Services Inc.

TheCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, was at the conference, providing daily coverage live from the HPE Discover show floor in Las Vegas, from June 20-22. This included interviews with HPE executives, along with appearances by customers and partners who provided new perspectives on the hybrid computing future. (* Disclosure below.)

Here are three insights you might have missed from theCUBE’s coverage during the week:

1. Slingshot provides a glimpse into HPE’s long-term strategy for AI and its vision for cloud computing.

As noted in a recent analysis by theCUBE’s Dave Vellante, HPE believes that high-performance computing and AI are on a collision course that will provide it with a distinct competitive advantage. This point was recently amplified by Antonio Neri (pictured), HPE’s president and CEO, during theCUBE’s exclusive interview with him at the conference.

HPE holds two of the top five supercomputer positions with Frontier and Lumi, and both employ an interconnect called Slingshot, which the company acquired through the purchase of supercomputer maker Cray Inc. in 2019. The growth of AI-driven workloads will require a different kind of network architecture according to Neri, and Slingshot will play an important role in this.

“If you think about how public clouds are being architected, it’s a traditional network architecture at massive scale, with leaf and spine where generic or general purpose workloads of sorts use that architecture to run workloads and connect to the data” Neri said. “When you go to this architecture, which is an AI native architecture, the network is completely different. You need the network interface cards that connect with each GPU or CPU, and also a bunch of accelerators that come with it. There it’s all about the silicon programmability with the contention software management, and that’s what Slingshot is all about.”

Later in the interview, Neri described how HPE’s data-first, modernization approach to hybrid computing would further define its position in the cloud universe.

“Data-driven now is becoming a reality with the acceleration of generative AI and large language models, and that’s where we have an opportunity to really participate in the cloud world,” Neri said. “And I would like to say there have been three clouds; now there are four clouds because one is very specialized. It’s not the capacity cloud, it’s the capability cloud, and we have unique IP to be able to do so.”

Here is theCUBE’s complete video interview with Antonio Neri:

2. Intel’s Xeon chip is pushing confidential computing to the cloud.

When Intel launched its newest Xeon server chips in January, the company added another set of features to its growing confidential computing portfolio.

The premise behind confidential computing is that by isolating sensitive data payloads with hardware-based memory protection, information traveling between computing systems can be treated with greater security. The 4th Gen Xeon processors leverage Intel SGX to verify application software and create trusted execution environments for code execution.

The Xeon updates followed the release of new hardware and software features for Project Amber, Intel’s confidential computing service that uses techniques to verify origin and trustworthiness of data packets and devices. Xeon can secure an entire virtual machine as a trusted enclave.

Intel’s confidential computing chips are being integrated within virtual machine instances for cloud networks run by several major players, including Google, IBM and Alibaba. Microsoft Corp. has partnered with Intel to leverage Xeon in its own Azure confidential computing offerings.

“We are setting up and establishing Xeon as the foundation for confidential computing,” said Lisa Spelman, corporate vice president and general manager of Xeon products at Intel, in her interview with theCUBE. “Confidential computing just means that your data is secure, your application is secure, your virtual machine is secure. We want to make sure that that hardware coming from Intel has all the right features and all the right security advisory software enabled so that you start with a trusted foundation.”

Here is theCUBE’s complete video interview with Lisa Spelman:

3. OpsRamp acquisition is already making an impact on HPE GreenLake and multicloud observability.

HPE made a number of announcements during the Discover event involving GreenLake, yet one of its most significant moves may have taken place three months earlier. In March, HPE announced that it would acquire infrastructure monitoring startup OpsRamp Inc. HPE had been both a customer and investor in the startup through its Pathfinder venture capital arm.

HPE didn’t wait long to integrate OpsRamp’s technology into GreenLake, adding new capabilities for customers to access full-stack observability and application automation across multicloud environments. The acquisition was significant in providing an AI-driven operational layer for cross-cloud infrastructure, as explained by Pradeep Kumar, senior vice president and general manager of HPE Services, in an interview with theCUBE.

“OpsRamp brings that AIOps to a hybrid environment or a multicloud environment, not just for HPE gear, but for a multi-variety of competitive gear,” Kumar said. “If a customer is using AWS, VMware, us, everything you can see through one pane of glass, what’s going on where, and that’s a huge, huge win.”

Here is theCUBE’s complete video interview with Pradeep Kumar:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover here’s our complete event video playlist:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for HPE Discover. Neither HPE, a sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE Media