SC24: Dell Technologies Boosts AI for Enterprises with Dell AI Factory Advancements

Summary:

AI infrastructure additions, including new liquid and air-cooled PowerEdge XE servers and Dell Data Lakehouse enhancements, efficiently deliver advanced compute at scale and simplify data access for AI
Supporting the Nvidia GB200 Grace Blackwell NVL4 Superchip will be a PowerEdge XE server designed for the Dell IR7000, supporting up to 144 GPUs in a 50OU standard rack
New solutions accelerate the development and deployment of AI applications
Dell Professional Services for sustainability, data management and networking help organizations more quickly reach AI goals by reducing complexity

Dell Technologies, Inc. continues to make enterprise AI adoption easier with the Dell AI Factory, expanding its AI solutions portfolio.⁽¹⁾

Powerful new infrastructure, solutions and services accelerate, simplify and streamline AI workloads and data management.

“Getting AI up and running across a company can be a real challenge,” said Arthur Lewis, president, infrastructure solutions group, Dell Technologies. “We’re making it easier for our customers with new AI infrastructure, solutions and services that simplify AI deployments, paving the way for smarter, faster ways to work and a more adaptable future.“

AI infrastructure offers high-density, efficient compute and eases access to data to power AI workloads

IR7000

Introduced earlier this year, the Dell Integrated Rack Scalable Systems (IRSS) program is a turnkey factory integration program that delivers fully loaded, plug-and-play rack-scale systems with Dell Smart Cooling. IRSS further simplifies deployment of energy efficient AI infrastructure with one-call service and support options for the entire rack. Once set up, the company takes care of the packaging waste and recycling, and can help with responsible recycling of your old hardware.

Dell has expanded the program to include the PowerEdge XE9685L and PowerEdge XE7740 servers in the standard 19-inch Integrated Rack 5000 (IR5000). The IR5000 is designed for high-density applications in a space-efficient form factor, and delivers high performance without compromising on energy efficiency.

PowerEdge XE9685L

The PowerEdge XE9685L is a dense, 4U liquid-cooled server designed for AI, ML, HPC and other data-intensive workloads. The dual 5^th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs paired with the Nvidia HGX H200 or B200 platforms, along with up to 12 PCIe gen 5.0 slots, offer customizable configurations to meet specific compute needs, optimized storage connectivity and maximum IO throughput for demanding workloads. This platform offers industry-leading GPU-density with up to 96 Nvidia GPUs per rack.

PowerEdge XE7740

The 4U air-cooled Dell PowerEdge XE7740 uses dual Intel Xeon 6 with P-cores and up to 8 double-wide accelerators, including Intel Gaudi 3 AI accelerators or Nvidia H200 NVL, or up to 16 single-wide accelerators, such as the Nvidia L4 Tensor Core GPU. This flexibility allows enterprises to right-size their server configuration for the workload at hand, from fine-tuning or inferencing GenAI models, to extracting value from large datasets.

Dell plans to support the upcoming Nvidia GB200 Grace Blackwell NVL4 Superchip with a PowerEdge XE server designed for the Dell IR7000, supporting up to 144 GPUs/rack in a 50OU standard rack. The IR7000 rack supports large-scale HPC and AI workloads requiring high power and liquid cooling with the ability for near 100% heat capture.

Updates to the Dell Data Lakehouse provide enterprises with modern architectures for managing and analyzing data for AI tasks. This platform is built on AI-optimized hardware and a full-stack software suite, and will expand to include Apache Spark for distributed data processing at scale. For businesses managing massive data volumes, the new Spark integration will provide significant efficiency gains, with a unified approach for data analytics, management, processing and analysis for faster, more actionable insights.

“The continued reimagining and improvement of AI and HPC technologies is critical to accelerating discoveries across industries,” said Dan Stanzione, executive director, Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). “With Dell’s AI solutions we are building complex HPC systems that allow innovation to thrive in research communities. Ultimately, these advances have the potential to reshape society and drive progress that benefits everyone.“

AI partner ecosystem solutions turbocharge AI adoption
Dell is collaborating with partners across the AI ecosystem to power and simplify AI deployments:

Updates to the Dell AI Factory with Nvidia deliver accelerated performance and reduced time-to-outcomes for AI operations and use case deployment. The Nvidia HGX H200 and H100NVL support options provide up to 1.9x higher performance compared to Nvidia HGX H100.
Dell Agentic RAG with Nvidia, part of the Dell AI Factory with Nvidia, allows customers to perform complex queries and accelerate their retrieval augmented generation (RAG) operations. The design helps organizations with large data sets use AI agents to improve RAG workflow performance, handle complex queries and deliver higher quality outcomes. The solution leverages PowerEdge, PowerScale and Nvidia AI Enterprise software and GenAI tools including NeMo Retriever microservices and the Nvidia AI Blueprint for multimodal PDF data extraction.
Dell Validated Designs for AI PCs are open-source guides designed to boost the development of AI applications on Dell AI PCs with NPU technology. Developers can easily customize the modular designs to integrate features like LLMs, vision, text and speech into applications. They can deploy the AI applications across multiple platforms, regardless of silicon. With this scalable approach, businesses can automate routine processes, save time, reduce costs and improve data security with on-device AI.

Reduce complexity and ease AI adoption with Dell Services
Finding talent to develop strategies and implement AI continues to be a challenge for organizations. Dell Professional Services help organizations reach their AI goals more efficiently with:

Advisory and implementation services for sustainable data centers provide the expertise to create and implement strategies designed to improve energy efficiency which can help lower emissions in the data center with intelligent power and cooling management to help customers achieve their sustainability goals.
Data management services deliver an AI-ready catalog by discovering, classifying and refining data, giving organizations simplified access to organized, high-quality data.
Design services for AI networking provide customers with a network design optimized for AI workloads that delivers faster speeds, reduced latency and enhanced scalability. ⁽²⁾
Implementation services for ServiceNow Now Assist integrate GenAI capabilities into service management workflows via Now Assist, which streamlines content gathering through AI-driven summaries to automate outcomes and improve productivity.

“Enterprises are pursuing AI to remain competitive in today’s digital landscape but they need to harness their proprietary data to differentiate,” said Dave Vellante, chief analyst, theCUBE Research. “We’re seeing a resurgence in interest for offerings like Dell’s AI infrastructure, solutions and services that can help customers prepare their data to extract insights, automate tasks and transform processes. As we continue into this new era of technological innovation, it will be critical for enterprises to continuously learn and invest in innovation to realize the benefits AI promises.”

Availability:

PowerEdge XE9685L will be globally available Q1 CY2025.
PowerEdge XE7740 will be globally available Q2 CY2025.
Updates to the Dell Data Lakehouse are globally available.
Dell Validated Designs for AI PCs are globally available.
Dell Generative AI Solutions with Nvidia – GPU update will be available Q4 CY2024.
Dell Generative AI Solutions with Nvidia – Enterprise-scale RAG is available.
Dell Data Management Services are available in select countries.
Dell Services for Sustainable Data Centers are available in select countries.
Dell Design Services for AI Networking are available in select countries.
Dell Implementation Services for ServiceNow Now Assist are available in select countries.

⁽¹⁾ Based on Dell analysis, July 2024. Dell Technologies offers hardware solutions with AI-powered features and solutions to support AI workloads from AI PCs and workstations to servers for high-performance computing, data storage, cloud native software-defined infrastructure, networking switches, data protection, HCI and services.
⁽²⁾ Compared to traditional networks.

Resources:
Blog: Accelerating AI Innovation: New Servers and Integrated Rack Solutions for the Future
Blog: Revolutionizing AI PC Adoption: Embrace the New Era
Blog: Your AI Future with Dell Services for Sustainable Data Centers
More about Dell AI Factory