Dell is extending its AI Factory range at the Supercomputing 2024 (SC24) event in Atlanta with Data Lakehouse and AI-focused server announcements.
It says the Data Lakehouse updates provide modern architectures for efficiently managing and analyzing data for AI tasks. It will expand to include Apache Spark for distributed data processing at scale. This Spark integration “will provide significant efficiency gains, with a unified approach for data analytics, management, processing and analysis for faster, more actionable insights.”
Arthur Lewis, president, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell Technologies, stated: “Getting AI up and running across a company can be a real challenge. We’re making it easier for our customers with new AI infrastructure, solutions and services.”
Dell’s Data Lakehouse was announced back in March and featured the Starburst Trino query engine, Kubernetes-orchestrated lakehouse system software, and scale-out S3-compatible object storage based on Dell’s ECS, ObjectScale, or PowerScale storage products. The Starburst code included so-called Warp Speed technology, with Apache Lucene indexing and caching technology.
Apache Spark is a distributed data processing engine designed for batch processing, real-time streaming, machine learning, and advanced analytics. Starburst Trino is a distributed SQL query engine intended for interactive and ad hoc queries across heterogeneous data sources.
The company boosted lakehouse query speed, added and upgraded connectors, and improved monitoring and security in June.
Dell announced two new servers in 4RU chassis for its 19-inch IR5000 rack:
- The liquid-cooled PowerEdge XE9685L has dual 5th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs paired with the Nvidia HGX H200 or B200 platforms, and up to 12 PCIe gen 5.0 slots. It has customizable configurations designed for AI, machine learning, high performance computing (HPC) and other data-intensive workloads. There can be up to 96 Nvidia GPUs per rack.
- The air-cooled PowerEdge XE7740 has dual Intel Xeon 6 CPUs 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, like the Nvidia L4 Tensor Core GPU. It is intended for GenAI model fine-tuning or inferencing and analyzing large datasets.
Dell has a new XE server coming that will support Nvidia’s GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip, with up to 144 GPUs per IR7000 rack (see bootnote).
It is also introducing:
- Dell AI Factory with Nvidia gets HGX H200 and H100NVL support options, providing up to 1.9x higher performance compared to the HGX H100.
- Agentic RAG with Nvidia uses 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 open source guides include NPU technology. Developers can customize the modular designs to integrate features like LLMs, vision, text and speech into applications.
It says the Agentic RAG with Nvidia design “helps organizations with large datasets use AI agents to improve RAG workflow performance, handle complex queries, and deliver higher quality outcomes.”
Dell’s Professional Services can, it says, ease AI adoption with Advisory and Implementation Services for Sustainable Data Centers, Data Management Services, Design Services for AI Networking, and Implementation Services for ServiceNow Now Assist.
Availability
- The PowerEdge XE9685L will be globally available Q1 calendar 2025.
- The PowerEdge XE7740 will be globally available Q2 calendar 2025.
- Updates to the Dell Data Lakehouse are globally available now.
- Dell Validated Designs for AI PCs are globally available now.
- Dell Generative AI Solutions with Nvidia – GPU update will be available Q4 calendar 2024.
- Dell Generative AI Solutions with Nvidia – Enterprise-scale RAG is globally available now.
- Dell Data Management Services are available in select countries now.
- Dell Services for Sustainable Data Centers are available in select countries now.
- Dell Design Services for AI Networking are available in select countries now.
- Dell Implementation Services for ServiceNow Now Assist are available in select countries now.
Read more in a server blog here and, on AI PC adoption, here.
Bootnote
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 has one-call service and support options for the entire rack and Dell takes care of the packaging waste and recycling.
The IR5000 is a standard 19-inch rack engineered for general-purpose datacenter applications. The IR7000 is a 50U standard rack incorporating liquid cooling, with the ability for near 100 percent heat capture, and has 21-inch wide sleds. This rack is for large-scale HPC and AI workloads requiring high power.
