AWS Weekly Roundup: Jamba 1.5 family, Llama 3.2, Amazon EC2 C8g and M8g instances and more (Sep 30, 2024)

Every week, there’s a new Amazon Web Services (AWS) community event where you can network, learn something new, and immerse yourself in the community. When you’re in a community, everyone grows together, and no one is left behind. Last week was no exception. I can highlight the Dutch AWS Community Day where Viktoria Semaan closed with a talk titled How to Create Impactful Content and Build a Strong Personal Brand, and the Peru User Group, who organized two days of talks and learning opportunities: UGCONF & SERVERLESSDAY 2024, featuring Jeff Barr, who spoke about how to Create Your Own Luck. The community events continue, so check them out at Upcoming AWS Community Days.

Last week’s launches
Here are the launches that got my attention.

Jamba 1.5 family of models by AI21 Labs is now available in Amazon Bedrock – The Jamba 1.5 Large and 1.5 Mini models feature a 256k context window, one of the longest on the market, enabling complex tasks like lengthy document analysis. With native support for structured JSON output, function calling, and document processing, they integrate into enterprise workflows for specialized AI solutions. To learn more, read Jamba 1.5 family of models by AI21 Labs is now available in Amazon Bedrock, visit the AI21 Labs in Amazon Bedrock page, and read the documentation.

AWS Lambda now supports Amazon Linux 2023 runtimes in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions – These runtimes offer the latest language features, including Python 3.12, Node.js 20, Java 21, .NET 8, Ruby 3.3, and Amazon Linux 2023. They have smaller deployment footprints, updated libraries, and a new package manager. Additionally, you can also use the container base images to build and deploy functions as a container image.

Amazon SageMaker Studio now supports automatic shutdown of idle applications – You can now enable automatic shutdown of inactive JupyterLab and CodeEditor applications using Amazon SageMaker Distribution image v2.0 or newer. Administrators can set idle shutdown times at domain or user profile levels, with optional user customization. This cost control mechanism helps avoid charges for unused instances and is available across all AWS Regions where SageMaker Studio is offered.

Amazon S3 is implementing a default 128 KB minimum object size for S3 Lifecycle transition rules to any S3 storage class – Reduce transition costs for datasets with many small objects by decreasing transition requests. Users can override the default and customize minimum object sizes. Existing rules remain unchanged, but the new default applies to new or modified configurations.

AWS Lake Formation centralized access control for Amazon Redshift data sharing is now available in 11 additional Regions – Enabling granular permissions management, including table, column, and row-level access to shared Amazon Redshift data. It also supports tag-based access control and trusted identity propagation with AWS IAM Identity Center for improved security and simplified management.

Llama 3.2 generative AI models now available in Amazon Bedrock – The collection includes 90B and 11B parameter multimodal models for sophisticated reasoning tasks, and 3B and 1B text-only models for edge devices. These models support vision tasks, offer improved performance, and are designed for responsible AI innovation across various applications. These models support a 128K context length and multilingual capabilities in eight languages. Learn more about it in Introducing Llama 3.2 models from Meta in Amazon Bedrock.

Share AWS End User Messaging SMS resources across multiple AWS accounts – You can use AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM), to share phone numbers, sender IDs, phone pools, and opt-out lists. Additionally, Amazon SNS now delivers SMS text messages through AWS End User Messaging, offering enhanced features like two-way messaging and granular permissions. These updates provide greater flexibility and control for SMS messaging across AWS services.

AWS Serverless Application Repository now supports AWS PrivateLink – Enabling direct connection from Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) without internet exposure. This enhances security by keeping communication within the AWS network. Available in all Regions where AWS Serverless Application Repository is offered, it can be set up using the AWS Management Console or AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).

Amazon SageMaker with MLflow now supports AWS PrivateLink for secure traffic routing – Enabling secure data transfer from Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to MLflow Tracking Servers within the AWS network. This enhances protection of sensitive information by avoiding public internet exposure. Available in most AWS Regions, it improves security for machine learning (ML) and generative AI experimentation using MLflow.

Introducing Amazon EC2 C8g and M8g Instances – Enhanced performance for compute-intensive and general-purpose workloads. With up to three times more vCPUs, three times more memory, 75 percent more memory bandwidth, and two times more L2 cache, these instances improve data processing, scalability, and cost-efficiency for various applications including high performance computing (HPC), batch processing, and microservices. Read more in Run your compute-
intensive and general purpose workloads sustainably with the new Amazon EC2 C8g, M8g instances.

Llama 3.2 models are now available in Amazon SageMaker JumpStart – These models offer various sizes from 1B to 90B parameters, support multimodal tasks, including image reasoning, and are more efficient for AI workloads. The 1B and 3B models can be fine-tuned, while Llama Guard 3 11B Vision supports responsible innovation and system-level safety. Learn more in Llama 3.2 models from Meta are now available in Amazon SageMaker JumpStart.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New at AWS page.

Other AWS news
Here are some additional projects, blog posts, and news items that you might find interesting:

Deploy generative AI agents in your contact center for voice and chat using Amazon Connect, Amazon Lex, and Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases – This solution enables low-latency customer interactions, answering queries from a knowledge base. Features include conversation analytics, automated testing, and hallucination detection in a serverless architecture.

How AWS WAF threat intelligence features help protect the player experience for betting and gaming customers – AWS WAF enhances bot protection for betting and gaming. New features include browser fingerprinting, automation detection, and ML models to identify coordinated bots. These tools combat scraping, fraud, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and cheating, safeguarding player experiences.

How to migrate 3DES keys from a FIPS to a non-FIPS AWS CloudHSM cluster – Learn how to securely transfer Triple Data Encryption Algorithm (3DES) keys from Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) hsm1 to non-FIPS hsm2 clusters using RSA-AES wrapping, without backups. This enables using new hsm2.medium instances with FIPS 140-3 Level 3 support, non-FIPS mode, increased key capacity, and mutual TLS (mTLS).

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendars and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

AWS Summits – Join free online and in-person events that bring the cloud computing community together to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. These events offer technical sessions, demonstrations, and workshops delivered by experts. There is only one event left that you can still register for: Ottawa (October 9).

AWS Community Days – Join community-led conferences featuring technical discussions, workshops, and hands-on labs driven by expert AWS users and industry leaders from around the world. Upcoming AWS Community Days are scheduled for October 3 in the Netherlands and Romania, and on October 5 in Jaipur, Mexico, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Panama. I’m happy to share with you that I will be joining the Panama community on October 5.

AWS GenAI Lofts – Collaborative spaces and immersive experiences that showcase AWS’s expertise with the cloud and AI, while providing startups and developers with hands-on access to AI products and services, exclusive sessions with industry leaders, and valuable networking opportunities with investors and peers. Find a GenAI Loft location near you and don’t forget to register. I’ll be in the San Francisco lounge with some demos on October 15 at the Gen AI Developer Day. If you’re attending, feel free to stop by and say hello!

Browse all upcoming AWS led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

Thanks to Dmytro Hlotenko and Diana Alfaro for the photos of their community events.

— Eli

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!