Azure and NVIDIA deliver next-gen GPU acceleration for AI
Microsoft Azure users are now able to harness the latest advancements in NVIDIA’s accelerated computing technology, revolutionising the training and deployment of their generative AI applications.
The integration of Azure ND H100 v5 virtual machines (VMs) with NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs and Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking promises seamless scaling of generative AI and high-performance computing applications, all at the click of a button.
This cutting-edge collaboration comes at a pivotal moment when developers and researchers are actively exploring the potential of large language models (LLMs) and accelerated computing to unlock novel consumer and business use cases.
NVIDIA’s H100 GPU achieves supercomputing-class performance through an array of architectural innovations. These include fourth-generation Tensor Cores, a new Transformer Engine for enhanced LLM acceleration, and NVLink technology that propels inter-GPU communication to unprecedented speeds of 900GB/sec.
The integration of the NVIDIA Quantum-2 CX7 InfiniBand – boasting 3,200 Gbps cross-node bandwidth – ensures flawless performance across GPUs, even at massive scales. This capability positions the technology on par with the computational capabilities of the world’s most advanced supercomputers.
The newly introduced ND H100 v5 VMs hold immense potential for training and inferring increasingly intricate LLMs and computer vision models. These neural networks power the most complex and compute-intensive generative AI applications, spanning from question answering and code generation to audio, video, image synthesis, and speech recognition.
A standout feature of the ND H100 v5 VMs is their ability to achieve up to a 2x speedup in LLM inference, notably demonstrated by the BLOOM 175B model when compared to previous generation instances. This performance boost underscores their capacity to optimise AI applications further, fueling innovation across industries.
The synergy between NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs and Microsoft Azure empowers enterprises with unparalleled AI training and inference capabilities. This partnership also streamlines the development and deployment of production AI, bolstered by the integration of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite and Azure Machine Learning for MLOps.
The combined efforts have led to groundbreaking AI performance, as validated by industry-standard MLPerf benchmarks:
The integration of the NVIDIA Omniverse platform with Azure extends the reach of this collaboration further, providing users with everything they need for industrial digitalisation and AI supercomputing.
(Image Credit: Uwe Hoh from Pixabay)
See also: Gcore partners with UbiOps and Graphcore to empower AI teams
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