Video: DDN Accelerates Ai, Analytics, and Deep Learning at GTC

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In this video from the 2019 GPU Technology Conference, James Coomer from DDN describes the company’s high-speed storage solutions for Ai, Machine Learning, and HPC.

This week at GTC, DDN is showcasing its high speed storage solutions, including its A³I architecture and new customer use cases in autonomous driving, life sciences, healthcare, retail, and financial services. DDN next generation of A³I reference architectures include NVIDIA’s DGX POD, DGX-2, and the DDN’s AI400 parallel storage appliance.”

Through industry standard benchmarks and customer use cases using the new reference architectures, DDN demonstrated how it establishes higher levels of application acceleration when combining the power of GPUs with parallel storage systems.

Featured use cases will include testing results from the Max Delbrück Center (MDC) for Molecular Medicine in conjunction with Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB). MDC is a leading molecular biology and clinical research center in Germany, and ZIB is an interdisciplinary research institute for applied mathematics and data-intensive high-performance computing. MDC originally partnered with DDN in 2018 to greatly accelerate its applications and to efficiently manage large volumes of data. Using an A³I architecture with an NVIDIA DGX-1 system and an AI200 from DDN, MDC was able to improve accuracy and precision within analyzed images while simultaneously accelerating training performance by 240 percent. More recent testing with an A³I architecture comprised of NVIDIA’s DGX-2 system and DDN’s AI400 revealed results that more than doubled previous improvements.

Our main discovery using DDN hardware was noticing its ability to scale,” said Alf Wachsmann, head of scientific computing department at MDC. “In our testing, we observed ‘native’ performance of the DGX-1 and DGX-2 for really large data sets, which was not possible without the A³I hardware. ‘Native’ performance means that we see all eight DGX-1 and 16 DGX-2 GPUs fully utilized, thus, we are able to make perfect use of these resources and speed up our deep learning workload from weeks to days.”

Other highlights include:

  • DDN Partnership with Robovision. With many customers expressing concerns around implementing AI successfully, DDN is excited to partner with Robovision and its self-service deep learning platform, which enables organizations to bring concrete, maintainable AI applications live in mere weeks.
  • Recent lab testing of the combination of NVIDIA’s DGX-2 along with DDN’s AI400 has reinforced our view that infrastructure considerations are fundamental to the realization of business transformation and life-improving AI applications,” said Jonathan Berte, CEO at Robovision. “DDN’s commitment to developing highly parallel and scalable architectures matches well with the high performance requirements of compute and AI applications. We look forward to upcoming projects with DDN and leveraging them to help customers extract the most value from their complex data.”
  • New DDN PartnerLink Program Tier. During the GTC conference, DDN will be launching a new Platinum Tier within the DDN PartnerLink program, exclusively for NVIDIA DGX-certified resellers of DDN A³I with NVIDIA DGX-1, DGX POD, and DGX-2. This specialized tier is designed to provide added support to the resellers who work closely with AI and deep learning customers and best understand their needs, and to support them with the highest quality of service. The new tier will provide resellers with exclusive offerings from DDN, including access to proof of concept units for qualified opportunities, special pricing for demo units, guaranteed margins for registered deals, and special pricing on DDN A³I with NVIDIA DGX systems.

DDN’s renewed focus on the channel over the last three years has strengthened our relationships with both customers and partners. We are excited about offering the Platinum Tier and to continuing to differentiate our channel program with focus and expertise,” said Dean Koester, senior vice president of field sales for Americas and Europe at DDN.

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