Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Nvidia is renting out its A.I. Superpod platform for $90K a month

Chuong Nguyen
By

Nvidia is looking to make work and development in artificial intelligence more accessible, giving researchers an easy way to access its DGX supercomputer. The company announced that it will launch a subscription service for its DGX Superpod as an affordable way to gain entry into the world of supercomputers.

The DGX SuperPod is capable of 100 petaflops of A.I. performance, according to the company, and when configured 20 DGX A100 systems, it’s designed for large-scale A.I. projects.

Related Videos

Despite the company’s marketing take on the new subscription service, affordable is still relative, as Nvidia’s new Superpod subscription still costs $90,000 per month when it launches this summer.

Related

The Nvidia Base Command Platform will be powered by its DGX computers, and Nvidia is working with NetApp for storage. Nvidia also announced that it is working with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud for instances within the cloud. The company claims that the hybrid experiences will allow developers to schedule jobs on-premise or in the cloud.

By relying on the cloud and a subscription model, A.I. researchers now only need a smaller form factor that’s easier to fit into a server, and Nvidia is billing its new A.I. service as part of the company’s efforts to democratize artificial intelligence work. In the consumer space, Nvidia is also relying on the cloud to bring the power of its graphics technologies to consumers who may be unable to buy, run, or afford their own discrete GPU setup for gaming through its GeForce Now service.

For reference, Nvidia’s A.I.-powered DGX 2 supercomputer launched at a price of $399,000 and was known as the world’s largest GPU, while the newer, more powerful DGX A100 starts at $199,000 and is capable of 5 petaflops of A.I. performance.

The company claims this new subscription model allows you “to experience the best of Nvidia software and hardware that’s easy for you to use” without any contractual commitments. It’s designed as a way to test drive Nvidia’s solutions.

Nvidia’s subscription-based model will also include its Bluefield 2 data center processing unit, or DPU, with every DGX.

“A new type of processor, designed to process data center infrastructure software, is needed to offload and accelerate the tremendous compute load of virtualization, networking, storage, security, and other cloud-native A.I. services,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said of his company’s DPU earlier this year when the company unveiled its plans for Bluefield 3. “The time for BlueField DPU has come.”

Developers will have access to Nvidia’s A.I. Enterprise software, which is an open-source stack that the company has integrated into a coherent platform with a special focus on enterprise support. The A.I. Enterprise software also features deep integration with VMWare’s vSphere. Customers will also have access to Nvidia Omniverse Enterprise software.

A specific launch date was not announced, but the company said that all this will be coming this summer.

In data centers, Nvidia is looking to expand the ARM ecosystem beyond just mobile. Beginning next year, Nvidia announced that it will focus its work on bringing the ARM architecture to data centers. Given that a lot of A.I. work is already handled by the GPU, Nvidia claims that the role of the traditional CPU will become that of a data orchestrator rather than for heavy compute purposes.

The company hopes to leverage its acquisition of Arm to help transform the data center for A.I. workloads into an energy-efficient solution that’s just as powerful. Nvidia executives had previously hinted of its ambitions with the ARM architecture earlier this year when it announced its Grace processor.

Be sure to follow Digital Trends for all the latest news from Computex.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
How the USPS uses Nvidia GPUs and A.I. to track missing mail
A United States Postal Service USPS truck driving on a tree-lined street.

The United States Postal Service, or USPS, is relying on artificial intelligence-powered by Nvidia's EGX systems to track more than 100 million pieces of mail a day that goes through its network. The world's busiest postal service system is relying on GPU-accelerated A.I. systems to help solve the challenges of locating lost or missing packages and mail. Essentially, the USPS turned to A.I. to help it locate a "needle in a haystack."

To solve that challenge, USPS engineers created an edge A.I. system of servers that can scan and locate mail. They created algorithms for the system that were trained on 13 Nvidia DGX systems located at USPS data centers. Nvidia's DGX A100 systems, for reference, pack in five petaflops of compute power and cost just under $200,000. It is based on the same Ampere architecture found on Nvidia's consumer GeForce RTX 3000 series GPUs.

Read more
These apps use A.I. to automate your life and save you time
best ai apps oval app lifestyle

Artificial intelligence (A.I.) can do a huge amount to help our lives, and that's especially evident in the devices we use every day. There are tons of apps that make great use of A.I. to introduce fantastic new features that save huge amounts of time, identify whatever you point your camera at, and much more.

If you are looking to get a helping hand from some ingenious algorithms, look no further. We have rounded up the best apps that can do the hard work for you on your mobile device or computer. Just download them and start reaping the benefits.
Scan Thing

Read more
Futuristic new appliance uses A.I. to sort and prep your recycling
Lasso

Lasso: The power to change recycling for good

Given the potential planet-ruining stakes involved, you’d expect that everyone on Earth would be brilliant at recycling. But folks are lazy and, no matter how much we might see footage of plastic-clogged oceans on TV, the idea of sorting out the plastic, glass, and paper for the weekly recycling day clearly strikes many as just a little bit too much effort.

Read more