DDN, the global specialist in artificial intelligence (AI) and multi-cloud data management solutions, has announced that it has sold more AI storage appliances in the first four months of 2023 than it had for all of 2022.
Broad enthusiasm for the business opportunities presented by generative AI has resulted in a steady increase in investment in AI and AI infrastructure, the company states.
Language-based AI applications, such as ChatGPT, have garnered much attention, though there are a number of other AI use cases with significant breakthroughs on the horizon, DDN states.
Ultra-realistic 3D and immersive universes in gaming, sophisticated new protein and molecule creation for drug discovery, autonomous driving, and space exploration are just a few examples where massive data processing is required to fuel innovations.
Dr. James Coomer, SVP of Products, DDN, comments, “The trillions of data objects and parameters required by generative AI cannot be fulfilled without an extremely scalable and high-performance data storage system. DDN has been the solution of choice for thousands of deployments for organisations such a NASA, University of Florida, and Naver.”
Whether in gaming, autonomous driving or natural language processing, massive data sets curated from various data sources are at the heart of generative AI and machine learning applications. However, to operate properly, they require very high levels of write and read data performance, extreme scale in cost-effective data capacity, a flexible delivery on-premises and in the cloud, as well as the highest efficiency and a minimal power footprint.
David Hall, Head of HPC at Lambda, DDN's Customer and Solution Partner, says, “Teams are moving rapidly to harness generative AI and need highly performant and scalable data platforms to be successful. Lambda’s deep expertise in large-scale GPU clusters, combined with cutting-edge DDN data platforms, is helping customers do just that - with flexible AI deployments in our cloud, on-premises or in colocation data centres.”
DDN built the AI400X2 appliance specifically for these enterprise AI applications, on-premise in data centres and in the cloud. It delivers up to exabytes of data at terabytes per second in sustained write and read performance, providing 33x higher efficiency than traditional storage systems at a fraction of the power requirements, the company states.
While generative AI applications that produce human-like text or digital image generators garner a lot of public attention, drug design, material science, chip design, and industrial manufacturing all stand to benefit from this technology, according to DDN.
With any novel technology, reducing risk is paramount for enterprises on their path toward realising value. With leading AI technology and expertise, DDN delivers proven solutions that accelerate customers’ strategic AI journey.