NVIDIA and Microsoft are collaborating on a new cloud-based AI-powered supercomputer, which they say will be "one of the most powerful in the world" when complete.
The new machine will take advantage of Microsoft Azure supercomputing infrastructure (opens in a new tab) combined with NVIDIA GPUs (opens in a new tab), networking and artificial intelligence software. It is configured to contain ND and NC series virtual machines designed specifically for distributed AI training and inference.
The companies say the project represents the first public cloud to integrate NVIDIA's full AI stack and will add tens of thousands of NVIDIA A100 and H100 GPUs, NVIDIA Quantum-2 400Gb/s InfiniBand networking, and the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite to your platform.
How will it be used?
The companies said the new machine will be used to help companies train, deploy and scale AI, including large models.
NVIDIA is also set to use Azure Scalable Virtual Machine Instances to research and advance generative AI.
It is an emerging field of AI (opens in a new tab) in which foundational models such as the Megatron Turing NLG 530B provide the foundation for unsupervised self-learning algorithms to create new text, code, digital images, video or audio.
Enterprises will also collaborate to take advantage of Microsoft's DeepSpeed deep optimization software, and NVIDIA's full stack of Azure-optimized AI workflows and SDKs will be available to enterprise customers.
“Advances in AI technology and industry adoption are accelerating. Advancement in core models has unleashed a tidal wave of research, fostering startups and enabling new business applications,” said Manuvir Das, vice president of enterprise computing at NVIDIA.
It's not just Microsoft turning to Nvidia to power its latest AI innovations.
Oracle and Nvidia announced a collaboration at Oracle Cloud World 2022. Tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, including the A100 and the upcoming H100, will support Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). (opens in a new tab)