SALT LAKE CITY - At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2024, Red Hat announced more updates to its OpenShift Kubernetes platform than you can shake a stick at. Most focused on AI integration, edge computing, and enhanced security features. Here, without further ado, are OpenShift's crème de la crème.

First up, Red Hat introduced OpenShift 4.17. This latest version of Red Hat's Kubernetes distribution is designed to accelerate innovation across hybrid cloud environments without compromising security and compliance requirements. Key enhancements include:

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Red Hat -- along with everyone else -- is doubling down on AI integration with several announcements:

To improve its AI backroom development, Red Hat announced an agreement to acquire Neural Magic, a company specializing in generative AI inference workloads.

Of course, AI is nothing without fast hardware support. So it's no surprise that Red Hat announced expanded support for Nvidia hardware, including the tech preview of Red Hat Device Edge on the Nvidia Jetson Orin and Nvidia IGX Orin platforms.

Thinking of the edge, Red Hat Device Edge 4.17 was unveiled. Focused on enhancing low-latency and AI-edge workloads, this update aims to modernize time-critical workloads in remote and distributed locations, supporting use cases with latency requirements below one millisecond.

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In short, as Joe Fernandes, VP and GM of Red Hat's AI business unit, said, "We're offering significant improvements in scalability, performance, and operational efficiency... making it possible for IT organizations to gain the benefits of a powerful AI platform while maintaining the ability to build, deploy and run on whatever environment their unique business needs dictate."

Red Hat is far from alone with its new and improved Kubernetes release. New Kubernetes software updates are as thick as fleas on a fat pup at the 9,000-plus attendees' KubeCon. That said, though, Red Hat continues to improve its cloud-native products at a remarkable clip.