NVIDIA's AI Launchpad enables instant AI infrastructure for enterprises

NVIDIA has released the NVIDIA AI Launchpad programme, an end-to-end NVIDIA hardware and software stack giving enterprises immediate access to NVIDIA-powered infrastructure and software.

The digital infrastructure company Equinix will be the first in the AI LaunchPad programme, to provide NVIDIA powered hybrid-cloud solutions on Platform Equinix.

By using the AI Launchpad, the Equinix infrastructure can deployed in minutes, which allows enterprises to access an entire range of NVIDIA resources that support almost all aspects of AI, from data center training and inference, to full-scale deployment at the edge.

"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," says NVIDIA head of enterprise computing, Manuvir Das.

"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."

NVIDIA says there's an increasing need for applications to access to data that is spread across public clouds and private data centers when building accurate AI models. It says by using AI LaunchPad at an interconnected hub such as Equinix, enterprises can utilise secure, high-speed access to an ecosystem of companies that operate their digital infrastructures.

Platform Equinix includes more than 220 data centers located in more than 60 metros spanning across five continents.

"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," says Equinix vice  president of business development, Steve Stienhilber.

"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."

One of the prominent industries served by Equinix is the automotive sector. Continental, a large global automotive technology company, 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," says Continental senior vice president, research and development, advanced driver assistance systems, Ismail Dagli.

"Adding NVIDIA powered AI inference and edge options to Equinix data centers is significant, as it enables AI to move from development into production."

According to NVIDIA, the key to AI LaunchPad is NVIDIA AI Enterprise, an end-to-end, cloud-native suite of AI and data analytics software optimised, supported, and exclusively certified by NVIDIA to run on VMware vSphere with NVIDIA-Certified Systems.  

By using AI Enterprise and VMware vSphere running on NVIDIA-Certified Systems, enterprises can deploy AI in Equinix data centers with close to bare-metal performance across multiple nodes, enabling them to power large, complex training and machine learning workloads.

VMware senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Platform, Krish Prasad, says enterprises are seeking solutions that enable them to easily integrate AI into their existing  infrastructure.

"VMware vSphere is critical to main streaming AI in the enterprise, and now NVIDIA AI LaunchPad will deliver an AI-ready enterprise platform as a turnkey solution to rapidly deploy, manage, and scale AI workloads." 

AI LaunchPad will leverage systems powered by NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPUs and NVIDIA BlueField DPUs. This combination provides enterprises the ability to accelerate AI workloads and take advantage of the security, isolation, and performance enhancements provided by DPUs.