Kevin Deierling, SVP Marketing @NVIDIA, discusses the evolution of cloud and datacenter infrastructure, the new economics of computing, and how DPUs are redefining data inspection and offloading.
DPUs, or data processing units, revolutionize data centers by offloading and accelerating network, storage, and security tasks from CPUs to specialized hardware.
Digital twins, created through DPUs, enable businesses to simulate and optimize products in virtual environments, accelerating innovation and improving competitiveness.
Deep dives
DPUs and the Transformation of Data Centers
DPUs, or data processing units, are revolutionizing data centers by offloading and accelerating network, storage, and security tasks from CPUs to specialized hardware. DPUs, also referred to as smart NICs, enable significant performance gains by freeing up CPU cores and ensuring efficient data transfer between GPUs and CPUs. The integration of software-defined networking, storage, and security with DPUs allows for the preservation of familiar management frameworks and APIs. This ensures that common applications can take advantage of DPUs without requiring extensive rewriting. As AI becomes increasingly essential for businesses, DPUs will play a pivotal role in enabling AI acceleration and protecting data through isolation and policy enforcement.
The Rise of Digital Twins
One of the transformative technologies made possible by DPUs is the concept of digital twins. Digital twins duplicate physical objects or systems in the digital realm, allowing businesses to simulate and analyze various scenarios. With digital twins, companies gain the ability to model and optimize products, such as cars, in virtual environments. Additionally, industries like pharmaceuticals can leverage digital twins to simulate and test the human immune system, expediting vaccine and drug development processes. The proliferation of digital twins empowers businesses across sectors to harness the power of AI and optimize their operations, making AI adoption essential for staying competitive in today's rapidly evolving landscape.
AI as a Business Imperative
AI has become indispensable for businesses, as embracing AI-driven solutions has become a matter of survival in the modern economy. Adopting AI technologies enables companies to transform their data centers into profit centers. With AI's ability to automate processes, improve decision-making, and unlock new opportunities, every industry stands to benefit from AI integration. The flexibility and scalability of DPUs equipped with AI accelerators and advanced networking capabilities offer businesses the performance and efficiency needed to deploy AI at scale. As AI permeates every aspect of operations, it is vital for organizations to develop multi-disciplinary teams, combining business expertise with technical AI knowledge, to fully leverage the potential of AI-driven transformations.
Kevin Deierling (@TechSeerKD, SVP Marketing @NVIDIA) talks about the evolution of cloud and datacenter infrastructure, the new economics of computing, and how DPUs are redefining how data gets inspected and offloaded.
Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about your background, and what brought you to this place where NVIDIA is now the center of cloud and the data center?
Topic 2 - Before we dive into your specific area of focus, I want to see if we can get a big picture view of where we are in 2021 with cloud & the datacenter?
Topic 3 - Everybody knows NVIDIA for GPUs (for gaming, or AI/ML/Analytics) and now ARM is part of the NVIDIA family. Your focus is on something called “DPUs”. Help us understand what a DPU is, and the core technical challenges it solves.
Topic 4 - As we see DPUs start to come into use, design/architecture-wise or SmartNICs, what are the key things that architects need to think about? And who is thinking about DPUs - infra architects, AI teams, etc?
Topic 5 - Where are the most common places where we’ll see DPUs / SmartNICs deployed today (how are they offered)? Can common applications take advantage of them, or do they need to be written to be DPU-aware? “Putting a computer in front of the computer”
Topic 6 - Give us some perspective on what the next couple of years might look like as this amount of processing and throughput becomes available, affordable and distributed to different platforms and clouds.
