CIQ and AMD Collaborate to Deliver Optimized Enterprise AI and HPC Infrastructure

Multi-phase collaboration begins with AMD-optimized Rocky Linux from CIQ, and will extend optimization across cluster management and workload orchestration

RENO, Nev., March 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- CIQ, the founding support and services partner of Rocky Linux, today announced a collaboration with AMD to deliver optimized enterprise infrastructure solutions for AI and HPC workloads running on AMD datacenter solutions including AMD Instinct™ GPUs, AMD ROCm™ software platform and more. The collaboration begins with AMD-optimized Rocky Linux from CIQ builds featuring validated AMD drivers, ROCm support, and day-zero deployment capability, with plans to integrate AMD optimizations throughout CIQ's infrastructure stack.

As enterprise AI moves from experimentation to production, the partnership establishes a foundation for delivering complete infrastructure solutions. CIQ's portfolio spans operating system, automation, cluster management and AI-optimized distributions, complementing AMD datacenter solutions to deliver increasingly integrated, AMD-optimized solutions across the stack.

As adoption of AMD Instinct GPUs grows across AI training, inference and HPC, enterprises increasingly seek validated software foundations that match the performance and scalability of the hardware. Deploying AI and HPC software stacks at scale requires careful alignment of GPU drivers, libraries and dependencies across Linux distributions. This collaboration standardizes a validated foundation for AMD ROCm software to simplify deployment and lifecycle management. At cluster scale, image management and version alignment can slow deployments. Validated, reproducible OS builds reduce these operational bottlenecks.

The collaboration offers an alternative to proprietary Linux solutions and addresses a gap in the market for freely accessible, enterprise-grade Linux optimized specifically for AMD-powered deployments.

The collaboration aims to deliver an AMD-optimized Rocky Linux build that enterprises can deploy at scale with day-zero capability, while reducing technical complexity and procurement barriers. Free enterprise access also enables AMD to deliver optimizations to the broadest possible user base. For customers deploying AMD datacenter solutions for large language model training, scientific simulation and data-intensive analytics, this provides a reproducible, enterprise-grade Linux foundation designed to unlock peak accelerator performance without custom integration work.

Rocky Linux has become one of the most widely deployed Enterprise Linux distributions in the world. Fedora EPEL telemetry shows millions of Rocky Linux systems in use globally, figures that understate the true deployment scale in air-gapped and enterprise environments. Rocky Linux's dominance in performance-intensive computing, combined with CIQ's enterprise capabilities, made the AMD datacenter solutions choice clear.

"Enterprise customers expect to move from infrastructure deployment to workload execution quickly," said Gregory Kurtzer, CEO of CIQ and founder of Rocky Linux. "This collaboration gives AMD a single, reproducible Linux foundation to optimize against, and it gives enterprises a path to deploy AMD datacenter solutions from day-zero, without procurement hurdles. Rocky Linux is already the OS of choice for performance-intensive computing. Adding AMD-specific optimization and keeping it freely accessible makes that combination even stronger for AI and HPC workloads."

"AMD Instinct GPUs along with our other datacenter solutions are designed to deliver leadership performance for AI and HPC workloads," said Chuck Gilbert, senior director system design engineering at AMD. "To fully realize that performance in production environments, customers need a validated, scalable software foundation. By collaborating with CIQ to optimize Rocky Linux for AMD datacenter solutions, we are reducing time-to-deployment, simplifying operations at scale, and strengthening the enterprise ecosystem around our AI platform."

The AMD-optimized Rocky Linux image will be available with enterprise support and lifecycle management from CIQ, providing organizations with a production-ready foundation for AMD-powered AI and HPC environments. Additional enhancements focused on cluster-scale deployments are expected in future releases.

Following general availability of the AMD-optimized image, CIQ plans to incorporate ongoing AMD performance enhancements and extend support for AMD Instinct GPUs and the AMD ROCm software platform across its infrastructure portfolio, including Warewulf Pro for cluster management, Ascender Pro for IT automation, Apptainer for containerization, and Fuzzball for workload orchestration. The companies expect to continue advancing joint ecosystem initiatives throughout 2026 and beyond in response to customer demand.

CIQ and AMD are delivering a scalable, open alternative for organizations seeking high-performance AI and HPC solutions without proprietary lock-in.

About CIQ
CIQ is the founding support and services partner for Rocky Linux and a leading provider of enterprise Linux infrastructure. CIQ delivers commercially supported Linux offerings, high-performance computing solutions and AI infrastructure to enterprises, government agencies, research institutions and supercomputing centers worldwide. CIQ's products include the Rocky Linux from CIQ Pro (RLC Pro) family of operating systems, Ascender Pro for IT automation, Fuzzball job-based container orchestration, Warewulf cluster provisioning and Apptainer, the leading container system for high-performance computing. For more information, visit ciq.com.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Cristin Connelly
Cathey.co for CIQ
[email protected]

SOURCE CIQ