HPE Boosts AI Deployments with AMD Helios Tech

HPE announced speeding up deployment of at-scale artificial intelligence (AI) training and inferencing for cloud service providers (CSPs), including neoclouds, by introducing the first AMD “Helios” AI rack-scale architecture with integrated scale-up Ethernet networking.

Based on the open Ultra Accelerator Link over Ethernet (UALoE) standard, the solution uses specially designed HPE Juniper Networking hardware and software in conjunction with Broadcom’s Tomahawk 6 networking chip. It can handle traffic from trillion parameter model training, high inference throughput, and massive model sizes.

The AMD “Helios” AI rack-scale solution will provide customers with flexibility, interoperability, energy efficiency, and quicker deployment in the face of growing industry demand for AI compute capacity. It will be delivered by an HPE Services team with extensive experience in direct liquid-cooling infrastructure and exascale installations.

“For more than a decade, HPE and AMD have pushed the boundaries of supercomputing, delivering multiple exascale-class systems and championing open standards that accelerate innovation,”

said Antonio Neri, President and CEO at HPE.

“With the introduction of the new AMD ‘Helios’ and our purpose-built HPE scale-up networking solution, we are providing our cloud service provider customers with faster deployments, greater flexibility, and reduced risk in how they scale AI computing in their businesses.”

“HPE has been an exceptional long-term partner to AMD, working with us to redefine what is possible in high-performance computing,”

said Dr. Lisa Su, Chair and CEO at AMD.

“With ‘Helios’, we’re taking that collaboration further, bringing together the full stack of AMD compute technologies and HPE’s system innovation to deliver an open, rack-scale AI platform that drives new levels of efficiency, scalability, and breakthrough performance for our customers in the AI era.”

Delivering a leap ahead in rack-scale AI performance, HPE will be one of the first businesses to provide the AMD “Helios” rack-scale solution. It is based on requirements from the Open Compute Project (OCP) that are optimized for power supply, improved liquid cooling, and high serviceability as needed for next-generation AI systems.

Broadcom is working with HPE to build the HPE Juniper Networking scale-up switch for the AMD “Helios” AI rack-scale architecture, utilizing the two companies’ historic relationship and commitment to open Ethernet technology for AI data center networks.

The goal of this endeavor is to provide high-performance, scalable, and effective networking solutions for contemporary AI workloads.

“Broadcom is proud to take part in this collaboration to advance open, Ethernet-based AI infrastructure for scale-up,”

said Hock E. Tan, President and CEO at Broadcom.

“Our high-performance silicon delivers industry-leading ultra-low latency, massive performance, and lossless networking with the scalability and efficiency modern AI workloads require. Together with HPE and AMD, we are enabling customers to build powerful AI data centers with standard Ethernet, maximizing choice and flexibility while delivering exceptional scale.”