Microsoft and NVIDIA team up to build one of the world’s most powerful AI supercomputers
As the artificial intelligence (AI) industry continues to grow and evolve at a rapid pace, many of the world’s top tech companies are investing heavily in the development of advanced AI technologies and platforms.
Recently, Microsoft announced that it will be cutting jobs with immediate effect, but will continue to hire in key strategic areas, particularly in the field of AI. This move comes on the heels of an announcement by NVIDIA, which revealed that it is working with Microsoft to build one of the world’s most powerful AI supercomputers.
AI Supercomputer
Partnership NVIDIA announced that it is partnering with Microsoft to build a cutting-edge AI supercomputer, which will be powered by Microsoft Azure’s supercomputing infrastructure and NVIDIA’s GPUs, networking, and full-stack AI software.
According to Manuvir Das, VP of corporate computing at NVIDIA, the development of foundational models “has sparked a tidal wave of research, promoted new startups, and allowed new enterprise applications.”
The ND- & NC-series virtual machines within Azure’s cloud AI computer, which are made for widespread AI training and inference, will serve as the foundation for the supercomputer. It’s going to be the first public cloud to employ NVIDIA’s cutting-edge AI stack and will include thousands of NVIDIA A100 & H100 GPUs as well as 400Gb/s NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking.
Research and Advancements
Additionally, NVIDIA and Microsoft will collaborate to enhance Microsoft’s DeepSpeed deep learning optimization tool, and corporate Azure customers will have access to the full NVIDIA AI process and SDK suite that has been optimized for Azure.
“AI is fueling the next wave of automation across organizations and industrial computers, enabling companies to accomplish more with less while they handle economic constraints,” claims Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Cloud + AI Group at Microsoft.
He added that the partnership with NVIDIA “unlocks the most scalable supercomputer platform in the world, bringing cutting-edge AI capabilities to any organization on Microsoft Azure.”
Conclusion
The partnership between NVIDIA and Microsoft is a significant development in the AI industry, as it will provide researchers and businesses with access to one of the world’s most powerful AI supercomputers.
This collaboration will also enable businesses to investigate and hasten improvements in generative AI, a fast-evolving area of artificial intelligence.
As the AI industry continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how other tech companies respond to this partnership and the impact it will have on the industry as a whole.
