Asia In brief One of Amazon Web Services’ availability zones in the United Arab Emirates is offline after the facility was hit by unknown objects.
Amazon’s status page indicated a “localized power issue has affected a single Availability Zone in the ME-CENTRAL-1 Region (mec1-az2)” as of 5:19 AM PST on March 1st.
At 9:41 AM the same day AWS said the availability zone “was impacted by objects that struck the datacenter, creating sparks and fire. The fire department shut off power to the facility and generators as they worked to put out the fire.”
AWS has not explained what the objects were or where they came from, but a likely explanation is debris from the conflict between the USA and Israel, and Iran as numerous reports confirm explosions in the Emirates after the conflict commenced.
The cloudy concern has advised users they may experience errors when calling EC2 APIs.
At 2:28 PM PST AWS said it was “seeing positive signs of recovery for many of the EC2 APIs” and advised it would resolve them in two to three hours.
Australia’s WiseTech uses AI to halve headcount
Australian supply chain software vendor WiseTech Global last week announced it will reduce headcount by half – meaning up to 2,000 job cuts – due to increased adoption of AI.
“The era of manually writing code as the core act of engineering is over,” wrote CEO Zubin Appoo in a regulatory filing. [PDF] “AI amplifies the productivity of our expertise in logistics … and it allows us to move faster from ideas to real customer value from efficiencies it brings in software development and product creation.” Appoo said the job cuts will first be felt in product & development teams, and in customer service roles.
Samsung plans autonomous factories
Samsung Electronics on Sunday announced its intention to operate autonomous factories by 2030.
“This initiative aims to fully integrate AI across the entire manufacturing value chain — from inbound material logistics and production to quality inspection and final shipment — establishing a next-generation autonomous production environment,” according to a company statement that envisions “specialized AI agents dedicated to quality control, production and logistics.”
The statement says Samsung will use this tech “across its global manufacturing network.”
The company has framed this move as a “transition from automation to advanced autonomy” and says it will involve “progressively introducing humanoid and task-specialized robotics across its production lines, including Operating Robots for line operations and facility management, Logistics Robots for autonomous material handling and transport and Assembly Robots for precision manufacturing tasks.”
Micron opens Indian plant
Memory-maker Micron Technology last week opened its first plant in India, a semiconductor assembly and test facility in Sanand, Gujarat, that it will use to convert DRAM and NAND wafers from into finished memory and storage products.
Micron announced the plant in 2023. Last Friday’s announcement admits that the facility is not yet completed, but stated “Once fully ramped, the first phase of Micron’s Sanand operation will feature more than 500,000 square feet of cleanroom space, making it one of the world’s largest single-floor assembly and test cleanrooms.”
Indonesia signs Arm training deal
The government of Indonesia last week signed a strategic partnership with UK chip design house Arm that will see the nation try to train 15,000 engineers on the company’s ecosystem.
Minister of Investment and Downstream Industries Rosan Perkasa Roeslani, who is also CEO of Indonesia’s sovereign wealth fund Danantara, said some Indonesian engineers will be sent abroad for training, and others will participate in sessions run by Arm trainers who visit the nation.
Rosan said the scheme will see Indonesia’s government select six industries to acquire chip development expertise, as the nation seeks to tap the global semiconductor boom.
Uber Dubai adds flying taxis
Uber last week announced it will add the option to hail a flying taxi to its app in the United Arab Emirates.
US-based Joby will provide the flying cabs, which Uber says will carry paying passengers “later this year.” ®