Nvidia and Microsoft Join Forces to Build AI Supercomputer

The venture aims to make the future tech available for businesses.

NVIDIA and Microsoft announced an ambitious project-driven partnership to build what they claim would be “one of the most powerful AI supercomputers in the world” built on the Azure cloud service. Described as a multiyear collaboration, the project will integrate Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing system with Nvidia’s A100 and H100 chips, its Quantum-2 InfiniBand network and Nvidia AI Enterprise software. The AI computer will be the “first public cloud” to do so, the companies said. The partnership follows a 2019 partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI that resulted in the development of the first supercomputer on Azure.

Through the collaboration, NVIDIA hopes to make strides in unsupervised (can also be semi-supervised) algorithmic learning that allows machines to create content such as text, code, digital images, video or audio. The field is broadly termed generative AI. NVIDIA will rope Megatron Turing NLG 530B (its answer to OpenAI’s GPT-3) to this end.

Nvidia said that Microsoft Azure is the first to use the Quantum-2 InfiniBand platform, which performs data and simulation operations at high speeds. The A100 and H100 processors are the company’s most powerful, and can be used in a variety of applications including science and manufacturing. The AI supercomputer will harness Microsoft’s virtual machines to handle more complex research and automated functions for organizations.

Nvidia also says it will use Azure to develop advanced generative AI that provides machines with the ability to create new content like code, text video or images.

Microsoft is one-upping itself by setting out to develop a new Azure-hosted supercomputer for AI training and deep learning applications. The partnership with NVIDIA means Microsoft is one of the first large-scale takers for H100, its powerful new AI-focused GPU based on the Hopper architecture developed by the American chipmaker.

The partnership also ensures that Azure customers will have access to the cloud-native suite of enterprise-grade AI and data analytics tools, software and frameworks, collectively known as the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite. Manuvir Das, vice president of enterprise computing at NVIDIA, said, “Our collaboration with Microsoft will provide researchers and companies with state-of-the-art AI infrastructure and software to capitalize on the transformative power of AI.

AI technology advances as well as industry adoption are accelerating. The breakthrough of foundation models has triggered a tidal wave of research, fostered new startups and enabled new enterprise applications,”