Google Cloud customers spinning up new Tensor Processing Unit VMs for AI workloads will notice something different beginning today, as Canonical has finally released certified Ubuntu images for TPU instances going all the way back to 2023’s v5e. Canonical and Google announced the release of certified Ubuntu images for TPU VMs in a press release penned by Canonical’s public cloud alliance director Hugo Huang today. Huang noted in the statement that certified Ubuntu images for TPU7x, v6e, v5p, and v5e are now the default whenever a TPU VM is created in Google Compute Engine. If you’re wondering what the big change is here, it’s basically about how Ubuntu in TPU VMs is supported. Huang told The Register that, prior to today, customers using TPU v5 and v6 were running a custom version of Ubuntu 22.04, but it was one that Google itself modified and managed.…