Dell EMC Powers Innovation with AI and HPC at ISC 2019

A virtual version of Dell EMC’s Ed Turkel posing with the vendor showdown trophy in front of a rack full of new water-cooled PowerEdge C6420 servers. Credit: ISC EVENTS PHOTOS

At ISC 2019, Dell Technologies announced a series of new solutions, reference designs, customer collaborations, and partnerships designed to advance and simplify the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning (DL) and high performance computing.

Organizations are increasingly using HPC and AI technology as tools to gain greater insight and value from their data,” said Thierry Pellegrino, vice president of HPC at Dell EMC. “Getting started and using these technologies can be complex, so we’re focused on making it simpler for organizations of all sizes. We’ve engineered Dell EMC Ready Solutions as tested and validated configurations that help our customers more easily and quickly benefit from HPC and AI technologies to reach their ultimate goals.”

According to HPC analyst and research firm, Hyperion Research, 2018 was another high growth year for HPC, with global industry revenues reaching $27.7 billion and Dell EMC growing at 13% over the past five years—more than double the industry rate.1 Big data, AI, DL, and machine learning (ML) are expected to bring new opportunities for organizations, especially as HPC and AI continue to converge for many HPC users.

Dell EMC expands Ready Solutions for AI portfolio

Dell EMC has expanded its portfolio of Ready Solutions for AI to include Deep Learning with Intel. This new Dell EMC Ready Solution, co-developed with Intel, helps enable organizations to deliver on the combined needs of their data science and IT teams, and benefit from deep learning.

Dell EMC Ready Solutions for AI help customers accelerate time to insights by providing pre-designed and pre-validated solutions ideal for ML and DL. The Deep Learning with Intel design can reduce total cost of ownership by up to 24% over a three-year period while providing double the compute time and 10 times the storage capacity than running the same workload on a leading public cloud AI service, according to research and analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group. It is the first industry solution with Nauta software, an Intel-led open source initiative for distributed deep learning using Kubernetes. Once deployed, users gain a simplified path to AI-powered applications with an easy-to-set-up solution that lets them focus on building models that generate value instead of constructing IT infrastructure.

Dell EMC Ready Solutions for AI are powered by Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, PowerSwitch networking, and Isilon scale-out NAS storage. Deep Learning with Intel also benefits from the newest AI capabilities of the 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Nauta Enterprise software. With its scalable approach, customers can grow their deep learning environments as needed. It is available to customers today, pre-configured with the open source TensorFlow distributed deep learning framework and libraries for data modeling.

New reference designs make HPC Digital Manufacturing easier

Dell EMC is expanding its Ready Solutions for HPC Digital Manufacturing with new and updated designs for Altair HyperWorks™, ANSYS Fluent, ANSYS Mechanical, Dassault Systèmes SIMULIA, LSTC LS-DYNA and Siemens’ Simcenter STAR-CCM+ software. These designs combine the flexibility of customized HPC systems with the speed, simplicity and reliability of pre-configured systems, enabling manufacturing, engineering and design-focused organizations to run complex design simulations, including structural analysis and computational fluid dynamics.

The new Ready Solutions for HPC Digital Manufacturing designs leverage Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, PowerSwitch networking and PowerVault storage, backed by a single point of contact for support with additional service options. The new Ready Solutions also benefit from the 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors available now in several PowerEdge servers, including the four-socket PowerEdge R840.

Dell Technologies Services further simplify AI and HPC deployments

Dell Technologies Consulting Services helps customers implement and operationalize Ready Solutions for AI technologies and libraries, and scale their data engineering and data science capabilities. Once deployed, ProSupport experts provide comprehensive hardware and collaborative software support to help ensure optimal system performance and minimize downtime. Additionally, Education Services offers courses and certifications on data science, advanced analytics and more.

Dell Technologies Services also has expanded its ProDeploy and ProSupport Enterprise Suite offerings to include ProDeploy for HPC and ProSupport Add-on for HPC services.3 This helps make the process of implementing an HPC solution simple, flexible and worry free–from installation and configuration to ongoing, comprehensive, single source support.

Dell Technologies HPC deployments fuel innovation and AI initiatives

Dell Technologies continues to collaborate with customers worldwide to deploy HPC and AI solutions that fuel a wide range of industry improvements and research activity.

Norson Design provides advanced solutions for the high-speed marine sector and is designing faster, safer and more efficient boats by working with Supercomputing Wales4, and its joint Atos Dell EMC Supercomputing Center of Excellence, as well as a team of researchers at Swansea University. Using HPC simulations and computational fluid dynamics, Norson Design can better understand the complex nature of how boats, water and air interact, and efficiently generate AI-developed aerodynamic and hydrodynamic designs for high-speed vessels.

Verne Global, located on a former NATO base in Iceland, operates a vast, industrial scale data center campus, powered by 100% renewable energy. This campus supports a wide range of customers, including manufacturing enterprises and financial, research and life science institutions, whose competitiveness depends on HPC, AI and data-driven applications. With the support of Dell EMC HPC solutions, Verne Global is providing specialist HPC and AI cloud and colocation services to more than 40 organizations.

The University of Liverpool, a globally-focused institution with multiple physical and virtual campuses across Liverpool, London, Suzhou, Singapore and online, is arming researchers and students with HPC resources to increase collaborative and inter-disciplinary work. Leveraging a hybrid system that brings together on-premises and public cloud resources, the university has created a unified environment, powered by Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and Alces Flight software, that connects to the public cloud and serves as a catalyst for discovery across a wide range of disciplines.

Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin is helping advance research and discovery with its new, National Science Foundation-supported Frontera supercomputer, ranked for the first time as one of the top 10 highest performing supercomputers on the latest Top500 list. Frontera leverages Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and Dell EMC Isilon unstructured data storage solutions in combination with 2nd generation Intel Xeon scalable processors, Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory, CoolIT Systems high-density Direct Contact Liquid Cooling and high performance Mellanox HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand interconnect to open up new possibilities in science and engineering.

Dell Technologies expands AI and HPC industry collaboration

Dell Technologies also announces new relationships with appliedAI and MOSAICrOWN.

Based in Germany, appliedAI is one of Europe’s largest non-profit initiatives for the application of artificial intelligence technology. Part of UnternehmerTUM, the largest non-profit innovation and entrepreneurship center, it is comprised of more than 25 technology companies and industry, ecosystem, international and academic partners and aims to accelerate the adoption of AI.

The MOSAICrOWN project5 aims to create new privacy preserving data markets for data sharing and collaborative analytics in multi-owner scenarios. The project consortium is led by the University of Milan, and includes partners such as Dell Technologies, Mastercard and SAP. The Dell Technologies research team based in Cork, Ireland, is leading the effort to develop secure data market solutions for the intelligent connected vehicle industry.

Both appliedAI and MOSAICrOWN will receive access to computing cycles from Dell Technologies’ supercomputing system Zenith, recognized as one of the industry’s TOP500 highest performing HPC systems, within the Dell EMC HPC and AI Innovation Lab.

Availability

Dell EMC Ready Solutions for AI, Deep Learning with Intel is available now in select countries with worldwide availability expected in Q4 of 2019.

New designs for Dell EMC Ready Solutions for HPC Digital Manufacturing, including for Altair HyperWorks, ANSYS Fluent, ANSYS Mechanical, Dassault Systèmes SIMULIA, LSTC LS-DYNA and Siemens’ Simcenter STAR-CCM+ software, are available now.

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