Dell/AMD partnership: Three insights you may have missed from theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World

With the AI factory becoming a key focus in enterprise IT, hybrid architecture has become equally important as organizations seek to generate workloads on-premises, in the cloud and at the edge. This is why enterprises are increasingly looking toward major players such as Dell Technologies Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. for production-scale deployment in the AI era.

The use of AI accelerators in Dell PowerEdge servers highlights this trend. By enabling enterprises to run meaningful AI inference workloads on high-performance processors without expensive infrastructure rebuilding, Dell and AMD are helping customers on the path to autonomy.

“We’ve been working with AMD for years on the CPU side, certainly the last few years on the GPU side, [with] deep engineering relationships,” said Melissa Crichton (pictured, right), vice president of server and AI solutions at Dell during an interview with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. “We basically will create and build the runbook. We’ve done all the testing, certifications on the hardware…helping to make it an easy button for our customers. They don’t want to be messing with the bits, they want it to be working, running and have time-to-first-token as soon as possible.”

Reporting from Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, theCUBE explored how Dell and its ecosystem partner AMD have collaborated to support hybrid architecture and efficient AI production-grade environments. (* Disclosure below.)

Here are three key insights you may have missed from theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World and the company’s partnership with AMD:

Insight #1: AI at the edge is powering enterprise adoption of hybrid architecture.

With 80% of data being created at the edge, enterprises will be required to run AI in multiple locations. This is fueling adoption of a hybrid IT model to meet the demands of agentic AI, according to Suresh Andani (left), corporate vice president for compute and enterprise AI at AMD.

“If you look at the enterprise, it’s like more adopting the hybrid AI architecture,” Andani told theCUBE. “As we are moving from a generative chatbot era to going more toward agentic AI, one size does not fit all. You basically want to go to your frontier models for certain classes of workloads, but then the architecture is evolving into what you can also bring on-prem or run on-prem.”

This interest in hybrid processing for AI has been central to the collaboration between AMD and Dell. The capability to move nimbly between cloud platforms and on-premises environments appeals to customers and this flexibility is shaping the delivery of new products and services.

“If you came to Dell Tech World several years ago before the AI boom…you would have heard cloud and multicloud every three seconds,” said Mike Darby, senior manager of business development, Instinct Data Center GPUs, at AMD, in an appearance on theCUBE. “Dell always had the hybrid cloud story and so on-prem is in their DNA and it’s always about the optionality to bounce between them dynamically. The key for me, being with AMD and partnering with Dell in these platforms, is that they are designed for enterprise to be able to do this stuff on-prem.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Melissa Crichton and Suresh Andani:

Insight #2: AMD and Dell are leveraging PCIe technology for air-coolable on-prem inferencing.

The role of PCI Express or PCIe architecture in modern IT is continuing to expand, thanks to its ability to facilitate high-bandwidth, low latency data transfer between components in enterprise systems.

This is particularly helpful in the use of GPUs to power AI workloads. During Dell Technologies World in May, AMD released its Instinct MI350 PCIe card which offered customers a way to leverage large GPU accelerators for AI inferencing within existing data center infrastructure. The announcement included pairing of the new PCIe card with Dell PowerEdge which offered more AI compute power and performance, according to Dell’s Crichton.

“We’re seeing a heavy opportunity within enterprise for PCI-based GPU workloads,” Crichton told theCUBE. “The announcement that we’re making with AMD fits right into that…using the right tech for the right workload.”

The use of PCIe is also supporting an industry shift toward air-cooled infrastructure. Dell found that, as it deployed its next-generation PowerEdge servers, some enterprise customers were still not prepared to adopt liquid cooling within data centers. AMD added PCIe-based technology to its latest GPU that facilitates air-cooling, providing users with a pragmatic path to enable AI deployment without the cost or complexity of data center retooling.

“Working with Dell, we added a PCI card to our air coolable roadmap for GPU Instinct so that it fit in more Dell PowerEdge servers that go to the broader enterprise,” said Robert Hormuth, corporate vice president of architecture and strategy for the Data Center Solutions Group at AMD, in conversation with theCUBE. “Not everybody is adopting direct liquid cooling.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Robert Hormuth, who was joined by David Schmidt, vice president of PowerEdge product management at Dell:

Insight #3: Customers must consolidate data center infrastructure as the pace of AI continues to move lightning-fast.

The partnership between Dell and AMD has been driven by the realities of a fast-moving market for AI. Customers need increasingly more efficient and cost-effective data center infrastructure to handle the evolving needs of AI. This involves a form of consolidation, according to Hormuth, as customers must free up space and power to make room for new autonomous technology.

“We’re going to keep driving the consolidation pretty hard with our customers…so that they can make room to be successful in AI,” Hormuth said. “Because the era of AI is not waiting. This is not one of these market trends that you can sit back and debate for six months or nine months to enter, because your competition is going to go fast. It’s not about doing the same with less, it’s about doing more projects.”

The speed of AI’s development and adoption has clearly been on the minds of top leaders at both Dell and AMD. Founder and CEO Michael Dell spoke about “a moment of courage and leadership” during his interview with theCUBE, describing a willingness to change things in a dramatic way. AMD chief executive Lisa Su has characterized the current atmosphere as one of “rapid scaling” and “strong momentum” for her company.

“Pace is the key word,” AMD’s Darby told theCUBE. “I had 16 years at Dell before I came to AMD and…AI hit everyone like a ton of bricks, and everything is so frenetic and fast paced. You have to keep sprinting to keep up. It’s amazing to watch the development and the roadmap…this is just the beginning.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Mike Darby:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World, here’s our complete video playlist:

(* Disclosure: Advanced Micro Devices sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AMD nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE