Data center operator Equinix and artificial intelligence company Nvidia said on Wednesday they have teamed up to provide the chip company's supercomputer systems to corporate customers. The cooperation includes NVIDIA DGX system, NVIDIA network and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform. Equinix installs and operates each customer's private NVIDIA infrastructure and can deploy services on their behalf in major data centers around the world.
Under the agreement, Nvidia trained Equinix employees on how to build and run its systems. Enterprise customers will buy Nvidia systems but pay Equinix to build and run them efficiently while still retaining ownership.
The partnership will make it easier for enterprises to own artificial intelligence computing systems and better control their data, rather than renting Nvidia's market-leading chips from cloud computing providers such as Amazon or Microsoft.
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said that generative AI is changing every industry. Now, enterprises can have NVIDIA AI supercomputing and software in hundreds of data centers around the world, combined with operational efficiencies managed by Equinix. "
The service is provided with access to high-speed private networks of global network service providers, enabling rapid generation of artificial intelligence information retrieval across enterprise wide area networks. Additionally, it provides cloud and enterprise service providers with private, high-bandwidth interconnect to facilitate artificial intelligence workloads while meeting data security and compliance requirements.
The service provides customers with easy access to NVIDIA AI Enterprise software to simplify the development and deployment of generative AI applications.
Charles Meyers, president and CEO of Equinix, said that in order to take advantage of the huge potential of generative artificial intelligence, enterprises need to build adaptable and scalable hybrid infrastructure in local markets to bring artificial intelligence supercomputing to their data. Equinix’s new service provides customers with a fast and cost-effective way to run advanced artificial intelligence infrastructure operated and managed by global experts.
Many large enterprises have expressed interest in having their own AI computing systems due to privacy and security concerns, but Nvidia systems differ from traditional data center servers in that they often use different network cabling and sometimes liquid cooling.
Jon Lin, executive vice president and general manager of data center services at Equinix, said in an interview: "We want to strengthen customer privacy protection because what we hear from our large customers is that they are very worried about others controlling their destiny."