Whether it was Michael Dell, NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang, or any of the many companies introducing AI infrastructure products on the showroom floor, the message of this year’s Dell Technologies World 2024 is clear: Every company will be an AI company, and rapidly evolving AI infrastructure is whatwill turn voluminous data into actionable intelligence, no matter what verticalyou’re in.
"The big idea of AI, no matter the source...is that wecould learn the meaning of information from the data," Huangsaid on stage at the event. "Every company at its foundation is intelligence," he added. “Every company will be an AI company…(and) every aspect of computing is being changed.”
The connected message alongside all that change? Be ready to compete as an AI company or suffer in the wider market.
To support that competitive advantage, Dell’s keynote highlighted the company’s vision of the future with Michael Dell and other celebrity CEOs announcing the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA, which the company describes as “the industry’s first end-to-end AI enterprisesolution integrating Dell’s compute, storage, client device, software, and services capabilities with NVIDIA’s advanced AI infrastructure and software suite, all underpinned by a high-speed networking fabric.”
Underthe Dell AI Factory banner, the company will offer updates and expansions to many of its data management, storage, security solutions, PowerEdge servers, networking, and integrated software solutions. Dell is collaborating with a slew of industry luminaries to stand it up, including the open-source AI platform provider Hugging Face, Microsoft, Meta, and, of course, NVIDIA.
AI end-to-end
AI isn’t just coming for the enterprise data center, but theend client as well. Dell and Qualcomm announced five new AI laptops powered by next-gen QualcommSnapdragon X Series processors. The Qualcomm processor brings 45 NPU TOPS,essentially meaning 13 billion parameter large language models like Meta’smedium-sized model Llama2 could run on-device on these PCs.
Technology infrastructure services provider Kyndryl announceda collaboration with NVIDIA to expand support for end-to-end lifecycle AIdevelopment and implementation for real-world business environments through itsopen integration digital business platform, Kyndryl Bridge.
“We’re excited to be working with NVIDIA to provide the building blocks and know-how customers need to fully unleash the potential ofgenerative AI throughout their businesses,” said Hidayatullah Shaikh, vice president, Software Engineering, Kyndryl Bridge. “By combining NVIDIA’sgenerative AI software with Kyndryl’s capabilities, we’re uniquely prepared tohelp address and resolve the biggest pain points for customers seeking tointegrate AI across their hybrid IT estates.”
Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow, highlighted Dell’s AIserver infrastructure as providing a critical backbone for ServiceNow’s “unheard of” 99 percent customer retention rate. McDermott highlighted the unprecedented transformative power of AI but urged that the most significant benefits will come when leaders and workforces can think differently about how they manage their data and infrastructure. The implication was that those whodo not deploy new tools and modes of thinking about how to engage data will beleft behind by those enterprise organizations who develop expertise early andkeep it up.
Blocks & Files: Liqid turns Dell servers into AI powerhouses
Finally, Chris Mellor at Blocks & Files reported on the AI capabilities that Liqid is highlighting at Dell Technologies World 2024: Our ability to make 30 NVIDIA L40S GPUs available to a single DellR760 server – which we believe to be a record accomplishment – for advanced, on-prem AI inference.
Mellor was keen to note the silicon-agnostic nature of solutions based on Liqid software makes it a compelling solution for those whoare looking for ways to extend AI infrastructure in environments in which GPUand other AI infrastructure solutions can take months and months to bedelivered, and cooling and power is at a premium.
“Our understanding is that Liqid can support GPUs and other accelerators from suppliers such as AMD and Intel. It is also aware of thepossibility of marketing its SmartStack and UltraStack technologies to MSPs that wish to supply GPUs for rent,” Mellor wrote.
Day one at Dell Technologies World was amazing, delivering big news for AI in the enterprise and details about how they will deploy avariety of technologies to harness its power. We’ll keep the updates rolling,so follow us on LinkedInto keep up on our hot takes!
