IBM and AMD have entered into a multi-year joint development agreement to enhance and extend the security and AI offerings of both companies.

The joint development agreement will expand this vision by building upon open-source software, open standards, and open system architectures to drive Confidential Computing in hybrid cloud environments and support a broad range of accelerators across HPC, and enterprise critical capabilities such as virtualization and encryption.

For many companies, securing highly sensitive data still remains a challenge: cybersecurity is currently the top barrier for adoption as well as the top criteria for selection of cloud providers, according to data from IBM’s Institute for Business value.

Confidential Computing is a technology, enabled by hardware, that allows the data associated with a running virtual machine (VM) to be encrypted, including while workloads are running.

This capability helps prevent would-be attackers and bad actors from accessing confidential information, even in the event of a break-in. Confidential Computing for hybrid cloud unlocks new potential for enterprise adoption of hybrid cloud computing, especially in regulated industries such as finance, healthcare and insurance.

Engagement between AMD and IBM researchers on joint development activities under the agreement is now underway.