NVIDIA today unveiled NVIDIA AI LaunchPad, a comprehensive program delivered through hybrid-cloud providers that gives enterprises immediate access to NVIDIA-powered infrastructure and software to streamline the entire AI lifecycle.
Digital infrastructure leader Equinix will be the first in the AI LaunchPad program, providing NVIDIA-powered hybrid-cloud solutions globally on Platform Equinix®. The Equinix infrastructure deploys in minutes, allowing enterprises to access an entire spectrum of NVIDIA resources that support virtually every aspect of AI, from data center training and inference to full-scale deployment at the edge.
With AI LaunchPad, Equinix customers can develop advanced AI on NVIDIA DGX™ SuperPODs managed by NVIDIA Base Command™ Platform, an AI development hub. Enterprises will also be able to use Base Command Platform on NVIDIA-Certified Systems™ from leading manufacturers including Dell Technologies and Lenovo. Built on the NVIDIA EGX™ platform, these industry-standard servers are ideal for running the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite on VMware vSphere to deploy an AI-ready enterprise platform that scales AI on hybrid clouds.
Additionally, customers can securely deploy and manage AI applications across distributed edge infrastructure at Equinix with the NVIDIA Fleet Command™ managed cloud service — which entered general availability today — connected to NVIDIA-Certified Systems.
“Today’s enterprises are looking for a simple, comprehensive solution that provides instant access to the resources they need to build and deploy AI with ease,” said Manuvir Das, head of Enterprise Computing at NVIDIA. “NVIDIA AI LaunchPad puts AI at the fingertips of enterprises everywhere with fully automated, hybrid-cloud infrastructure and software for every stage of the AI lifecycle.”
Global Ecosystem for AI in Hybrid Clouds
Increasingly, in order to build accurate AI models, applications need to access multiple external data sources that are spread across public clouds and private enterprise data centers. By using AI LaunchPad at an interconnected hub like Equinix, enterprises can have secure, high-speed access via Equinix Fabric™ to an ecosystem of companies that operate their digital infrastructures at Equinix. The global reach of Platform Equinix, which includes more than 220 data centers strategically located in more than 60 metros spanning across five continents, also helps to satisfy real-time performance requirements for digital businesses.
“Many industries use private clouds to keep costs down by having computing resources close to the data, for performance, data privacy, ownership and sovereignty reasons,” said Steve Stienhilber, vice president of Business Development at Equinix. “With NVIDIA AI LaunchPad globally available at Equinix, enterprises will have immediate access to NVIDIA software and NVIDIA-Certified infrastructure in a comprehensive hybrid-cloud solution.”
Turnkey Hybrid Cloud for Industries
Among the key industries served by Equinix is the automotive sector. Continental, one of the world’s largest automotive technology companies, uses NVIDIA DGX™ systems hosted at Equinix data centers to develop autonomous vehicle technologies for manufacturers.
“Developing advanced AI technologies requires substantial accelerated computing infrastructure, and having NVIDIA systems available globally in Equinix data centers ensures that our teams always have access to the resources they need,” said Ismail Dagli, senior vice president of Research and Development in the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems business unit at Continental. “Adding NVIDIA-powered AI inference and edge options to Equinix data centers is significant, as it enables AI to move from development into production.”
Accelerated AI on Mainstream Servers
Key to AI LaunchPad is NVIDIA AI Enterprise, which is an end-to-end, cloud-native suite of AI and data analytics software that is optimized, supported and exclusively certified by NVIDIA to run on VMware vSphere with NVIDIA-Certified Systems.
With AI Enterprise and VMware vSphere running on NVIDIA-Certified Systems, enterprises can easily deploy AI in Equinix data centers with near bare-metal performance across multiple nodes to power large, complex training and machine learning workloads.
“Enterprises are seeking solutions that enable them to easily integrate AI into their existing infrastructure,” said Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager of the Cloud Platform business unit at VMware. “VMware vSphere is critical to mainstreaming AI in the enterprise, and now, NVIDIA AI LaunchPad will deliver our AI-ready enterprise platform as a turnkey solution to rapidly deploy, manage and scale AI workloads.”
