DDN Enables Enterprises to Accelerate Success in AI Initiatives with NVIDIA DGX Systems

CHATSWORTH, Calif., March 30, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Enterprises increasingly rely on artificial intelligence (AI) as a powerful business enabler with massive potential rewards. However, research has shown that a staggering nine out of 10 AI initiatives fail due to complexities in architecting and optimizing AI deployments, and failing to successfully take them from prototype to production.¹ DDN^®, the global leader in AI and multi cloud data management solutions, takes the successful integration of AI in Enterprise IT infrastructures to the next level, by delivering powerful, easy to deploy, production-ready and cost-effective AI storage systems to its customers. DDN's A³I^TM (Accelerated, Any-Scale AI) solutions bring unmatched performance and complete control to AI workflows at any scale.

"To achieve a strong competitive edge, enterprises must extract more value out of their data and greatly accelerate time to insight. For that to happen, a flexible and agile data storage platform which reliably and intelligently handles massive amounts of dynamic data is essential," said Dr. James Coomer, vice president of products, DDN. "For the past two decades DDN has successfully deployed value driven intelligent infrastructure storage solutions. Our increasing success in bringing AI-enabling data storage to more than 11,000 customers reinforces our reputation as a leader in At-Scale solutions."

DDN and NVIDIA offer a joint integrated AI solution that is highly optimized across data storage, software, networking and GPU acceleration. As the only storage platform certified by NVIDIA for DGX SuperPOD™ with DGX™ A100 systems, DDN A³I handles hundreds of petabytes of dynamic data and is optimized for the entire end-to-end AI workload.

In addition to DGX SuperPOD support, DDN's A3I portfolio has grown to include DGX POD offering entry-level infrastructure solutions for enterprise, starting with 2-node DGX A100 configurations for businesses that want a starter system that offers modular scale as AI workloads grow.

The DDN and NVIDIA joint solution delivers amazing value to customers through:

• 33 times faster AI inference than traditional storage
• 10 times faster AI data ingestion
• 46 times more IOPS into GPU Infrastructure²

"Advanced AI and data science applications process massive amounts of data, making it critical for storage to keep up with the accelerated computing of NVIDIA DGX systems," said Tony Paikeday, senior director of DGX systems, NVIDIA. "The DDN A³I reference architectures for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD and DGX POD enables organizations to rapidly implement the high-performance AI infrastructure they need to power their most important work at any level of scale."

DDN A³I systems combine DDN storage and AI-powered data management tools to deliver acceleration in complex AI applications such as recommendation systems, image analysis and natural language processing (NLP). DDN A³I is fully optimized to accelerate machine learning, streamline deep learning workflows and eliminate complexity in deployment and management at any scale.

"AI and machine learning-driven big data analytics are a popular next generation application being deployed by enterprises undergoing digital transformation," said Eric Burgener, research vice president, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies, at IDC. "The introduction of this new, smaller NVIDIA DGX POD reference architecture makes it much easier to deploy the infrastructure to get AI workloads up and running quickly so they can start driving business value."

DDN A³I client plugins for NVIDIA DGX systems and other GPU environments ensure applications run fast out of the box with AI container workloads. By delivering an optimized data path, A³I solutions overcome I/O difficulties previously considered insurmountable, accelerating performance intensive applications and scalable data science use cases.

"Undeniably, since AI has entered our lives, it has greatly facilitated our social development and research capabilities, and has facilitated breakthroughs across all industries," said Dr. Akkarit Sangpetch, ECE program director at CMKL University and a member of KMITL's Faculty of Engineering. "AI, furthermore, has proved its great ability to identify patterns in the data, and we are committed to offering the fastest and most sophisticated infrastructure to unlock insights contained in those massive datasets. DDN's solution gives us the ability to do just that. In addition, their trusted reputation and deep experience with educational institutes further affirm our goal in providing an AI data platform for research and education."

Supporting Resources

• More on DDN A³I solutions
• DDN A³I/NVIDIA DGX™ POD Reference Architecture 

About DDN

DDN is the world's largest private data storage company and the leading provider of intelligent technology and infrastructure solutions for Enterprise At Scale, AI and analytics, HPC, government and academia customers. Through its DDN and Tintri divisions the company delivers AI, Data Management software and hardware solutions, and unified analytics frameworks to solve complex business challenges for data-intensive, global organizations. DDN provides its enterprise customers with the most flexible, efficient and reliable data storage solutions for on-premises and multi-cloud environments at any scale. Over the last two decades, DDN has established itself as the data management provider of choice for over 11,000 enterprises, government, and public-sector customers, including many of the world's leading financial services firms, life science organizations, manufacturing and energy companies, research facilities, and web and cloud service providers. 

Contact:

Press Relations at DDN
[email protected] 

Walt & Company, on behalf of DDN
Sharon Sumrit, 408.369.7200 x2981
[email protected]

©2021 All rights reserved. DDN and A³I are trademarks or registered trademarks owned by DataDirect Networks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

^1.  Deloitte 2020 Survey: State of AI in the Enterprise; Third Edition: Thriving in the Era of Pervasive AI
^2.  Results based on DDN internal testing; see "Removing Risk from AI Scale," DDN blog

SOURCE DDN