NVIDIA announced that it will be partnering up with Microsoft “to build one of the most powerful AI supercomputers in the world”. The multi-year collaboration will be backed up by Microsoft Azure’s advanced supercomputing infrastructure combined with NVIDIA GPUs, networking, and full stack of AI software. In turn, this will assist enterprises train, deploy and scale AI, including large, state-of-the-art models.
Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s executive VP of the Cloud + AI Group indicated that:
AI is fueling the next wave of automation across enterprises and industrial computing, enabling organizations to do more with less as they navigate economic uncertainties. Our collaboration with NVIDIA unlocks the world’s most scalable supercomputer platform, which delivers state-of-the-art AI capabilities for every enterprise on Microsoft Azure.
Microsoft has highlighted that the Azure instances on this supercomputer feature Quantum 200Gb/s InfiniBand networking and A100 GPUs from NVIDIA. The company further added that there are plans underway to enhance its performance with Nvidia’s Quantum-2 400Gb/s InfiniBand networking and H100 GPUs.
The vice president of enterprise computing at NVIDIA, Manuvir Das indicated that, “AI technology advances, as well as industry adoption, are accelerating. The breakthrough of foundation models has triggered a tidal wave of research, fostered new startups, and enabled new enterprise applications. Our collaboration with Microsoft will provide researchers and companies with state-of-the-art AI infrastructure and software to capitalize on the transformative power of AI.”
Azure enterprise customers will be able to access NVIDIA’s AI suite as well as software development kits that are backed by Azure soon. It is not yet clear when users will be able to access the Azure Cloud-based AI supercomputer.
