AWS once again pulled out all the stops at re:Invent 2024. The annual event in Las Vegas was all about artificial intelligence (AI), and the cloud giant made that clear.

At re:Invent 2024, AWS not only wants to show that it is ready for the AI ​​future, but that it is shaping that future itself. The conference brings together more than 60,000 visitors, customers and partners every day, offering hundreds of technical sessions and innovative announcements.

New tools, infrastructure and a future vision from GenAI to help companies turn the technology into concrete results… AWS clearly wants to be number one in the cloud.

From three to four building blocks

Matt Garman’s keynote at his first re:Invent as CEO offered a comprehensive look at the future of the cloud. “There has never been a more exciting time for companies experiencing this transformation, thanks to all the technology players like AWS bringing to market,” Garman said. More than 60,000 visitors followed the event live, and another 400,000 people followed the announcements online. AWS presented itself as an indispensable partner for companies that want to continue to innovate.

AWS presented its vision for a future where AI is at the core of its cloud infrastructure. This vision is based on four building blocks: computing power, storage, databases and a new inference pillar specifically aimed at implementing AI models.

“In my view, generative AI inference will be a critical building block for every application. In fact, I believe that generative AI has the potential to transform every industry, every company, every workflow and every user experience. “Just look at what’s already happening,” Garman explains.

Generative AI intelligence is becoming a crucial building block for every application.

Matt Garman, CEO AWS

However, the three classic building blocks remain essential. Computing power, storage and databases form the basis of the AWS cloud infrastructure. Inference ensures that AI models provide correct answers within a context. “Inference is our logical next step in making AI not only scalable, but also useful in everyday operations,” Garman said.

Everything in the service of AI

AWS made it clear during re:Invent that it wanted to make AI the core of its services. One of the most notable announcements was Amazon’s Nova tools. These are four new text models as well as photo and video generation models. In addition, Amazon Q Developer and Q Business AI Agents also received updates. “With Q, we not only provide assistance, but also accelerate innovation,” emphasized Garman.

Amazon Bedrock also received a major update. Bedrock provides access to genAI models, including those from AWS itself and from third parties such as Anthropic. New features like model distillation make it easier to build smaller, more efficient AI models, while reasoning checks improve the reliability of AI output.

Multi-agent collaboration would be a powerful feature to automate complicated workflows. Moody’s illustrated this by showing how financial reporting was completed in an hour rather than a week.

Calculate: from Graviton to genAI

Compute remains one of the most important parts of AWS strategy. The company stated that the previously introduced Graviton 4 processor was forty percent faster and performed thirty percent better than Graviton 3. Garman pointed to Pinterest, which achieved a 47 percent savings in computing costs thanks to the switch to Graviton. “Ninety of the top 1,000 EC2 customers are already using Graviton,” he added.

For companies that train AI models, AWS introduces the Trainium 2 Ultraservers. These are training chips. With an impressive 83 petaflops, these servers are said to offer unparalleled efficiency. Garman also announced Trainium 3, the new generation of AI training chips that will be available in 2025 and is said to be forty percent more energy efficient

Faster storage, smarter databases

Storage and databases also received enough attention. Amazon S3 Tables promise up to three times faster query performance and up to ten times faster transactions per second for Apache Iceberg, perfect for large-scale data analysis. S3 Tables is only the second expansion of AWS’s S3 bucket format, following the introduction of S3 Express last year.

For businesses that rely on unstructured data, AWS introduced S3 Metadata, which automatically updates metadata to make managing records and workflows more efficient.

The innovation for databases was Amazon Aurora DSQL, an SQL database that promises unlimited scalability and requires no infrastructure management. DynamoDB now supports multiple regions. This speeds up the management of databases in different regions without causing problems with commits.

Efficiency and sustainability in data centers

AWS has also made improvements to its infrastructure. Innovations in cooling and energy management have increased data center efficiency by twelve percent. These improvements reduce interruptions and increase the capacity to run heavy workloads, such as: B. genAI.

Bombastic atmosphere

Re:Invent remains an experience that completely takes over Las Vegas, or at least the hotels in which it takes place. Huge halls filled with thousands of visitors, networking events in luxury hotels and a jam-packed program with keynotes, sessions and workshops.

The event not only offers an insight into different companies and their technologies, but above all is inspiring. Visitors came not only to hear the latest innovations, but also to get insights from big names in the industry (Apple’s Benoît Dupin was featured during a keynote!) and to learn from partners and customers at the expo.

AWS shows itself at re:Invent as a technology giant that continually reinvents itself. From computing power to storage to databases and inference, the announcements clearly demonstrate AWS’s commitment to integrating AI into all of its applications.

The focus is no surprise. Every technology company today screams that it is an AI company, and AWS is no exception. However, the cloud giant has some catching up to do: AWS jumped onto the AI ​​bandwagon later than its major competitor Microsoft Azure and must make it clear that its own cloud offering is also ideal for those who want to eat the AI ​​cake.