Power AI
IBM unveils industry’s most advanced server designed for AI
December 14, 2017 | Written by: Thomas Christensen
Categorized: Power AI
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IBM introduced its next-generation IBM Power Systems servers, incorporating its newly designed POWER9 processor, built specifically for computer-intensive artificial intelligence workloads. Four years in the making, the new systems are capable of improving the training times of deep learning frameworks by nearly four times, allowing enterprises to build more accurate AI applications faster.
The new POWER9-based AC922 systems are the first to embed the latest technologies, including PCI-Express 4.0, next-generation NVIDIA NVLink and OpenCAPI, which when combined, will accelerate data movement 9.5 times faster than PCI-E 3.0 x86 systems. This drives demonstrable performance improvements across the most popular AI frameworks.
POWER9 is at the heart of the soon-to-be most powerful data-intensive supercomputers in the world, the U.S. Department of Energy’s “Summit” and “Sierra” supercomputers and has been tapped by Google.
Why this matters:
The era of AI demands tremendous processing power and unprecedented speed. If we thought data was big before, the volume of data required to train a deep learning model is almost unfathomable.
Today, companies are forced to string together dozens of boxes using a traditional hardware architecture just to start a proof of concept project, and they wind up spending weeks waiting for an outcome.
IBM’s new POWER9 systems deliver exclusive innovations for data scientists to build applications faster, ranging from deep learning insights in scientific research, to real-time fraud detection and credit risk analysis.
How IBM can help:
IBM is the only vendor that can provide enterprises with an infrastructure that incorporates cutting-edge hardware and software with the latest open-source innovations. With PowerAI, IBM has optimized and simplified the deployment of deep learning frameworks and libraries on the Power architecture, allowing data scientists to be up and running in minutes.
IBM Research is developing a wide array of technologies for the POWER architecture. IBM researchers have already cut deep learning times from days to hours with the PowerAI Distributed Deep Learning toolkit.
IBM serves as a catalyst for innovation to thrive, fuelling an open, fast-growing community of more than 300 OpenPOWER Foundation and OpenCAPI Consortium members.
To learn more about POWER9 and the AC922, click here or contact me at tchristensen@dk.ibm.com.
Business Unit Executive, Storage Nordics
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