Dell AI Factory 2.0 with Nvidia supports agentic AI, semantic queries

Dell Technologies Inc. and Nvidia Corp. aim to stay ahead of the curve on artificial intelligence infrastructure by releasing the latest version of Dell AI Factory with Nvidia, described as “AI in a box.”

Since the product was announced at Nvidia’s 2024 GTC conference, Dell and Nvidia have collaborated on numerous updates, leading to the 2.0 version Dell announced this week. The upgrades are focused on supporting agentic AI and improving networking compatibility between the two companies’ technologies, according to Varun Chhabra (pictured, right), senior vice president of product marketing, Infrastructure Solutions Group and Telecom, at Dell.

Dell’s Varun Chhabra and Nvidia’s Kari Briski talk with theCUBE about their ongoing collaboration.

“With 2.0, there is a big focus on obviously refreshing the latest infrastructure based on all the innovation that Nvidia is bringing in,” Chhabra said. “We also have a greater and expanded relationship with Nvidia on the networking side, where Nvidia networking is now available to Dell for customers. Compute, storage and networking … need support for their AI Factory with Nvidia. They are able to get that through us.”

Chhabra and Kari Briski (left), vice president of generative AI software for enterprise at Nvidia, spoke with theCUBE’s Dave Vellante and John Furrier at Dell Technologies World, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed what’s new about Dell AI Factory 2.0 and what is next for machine learning. (* Disclosure below.)

Turning the “data flywheel” through Dell AI Factory

Since generative artificial intelligence burst onto the scene, the technology has evolved rapidly. Now, AI agents and enterprise-scale large language models are at the center of the conversation, alongside concerns over how to manage the data centers that sustain them. Dell AI Factory manages the full AI lifecycle — from the data center to the user-specific application — to applying the best tools to the task, according to Briski.

“Enterprises are moving from [central processing unit]-powered enterprise operations to [graphics processing unit]-enterprise operations … because of LLMs and agentic AI,” she said. “When you’re working with these enterprise systems, you need agents that can perceive and understand the tools that they have access to. These storage servers are going to have to be semantic storage servers.”

Semantic storage servers provide knowledge instead of data, managing the relationship between different data points to answer queries faster. This is how the Dell data lakehouse offers more flexibility to customers: By doing all the semantic work and serving it up in a ready-to-go package, according to Chhabra.

“Whether it’s structured data or unstructured data, whether it’s sitting on Dell storage or out on the edge or in the cloud, what apps and developers want is access to all of that data in a seamless way,” he said. “They don’t want to have to build a lot of capability around semantic search. They want that inbuilt into the platform. They want federated access.”

Governing agentic AI continues to be front-of-mind for infrastructure providers, ensuring that agents are constantly improving and providing accurate results. In this age of AI, the IT department has become the managers of a digital workforce, according to Briski.

“You evaluate these digital workers,” she explained. “And then, you’re going to put them back out. The data flywheel is meant to do that. So as an agent is out working from those logs, from implicit and explicit feedback, from humans and logs, you’re able to curate that data, customize, evaluate, guardrail and put them back out.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Dell Technologies World:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell Technologies World. Neither Dell Technologies Inc., the primary sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE