Nvidia Puts Certified AI Servers At Forefront In New Program

Nvidia wants to steer customers and partners to buy select GPU servers from OEMs, ODMs and other system builders that have been certified to provide optimized AI performance as part of a new program.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company announced the new Nvidia-Certified Systems program, which it called an industry first because of the emphasis on testing the servers for "real life" workloads for AI and ensuring that such workloads can be supported in large server deployments.

Nvidia kicked off the program with 14 certified GPU servers from Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Gigabyte, Supermicro and Inspur. However, the chipmaker said it anticipates the server roster to grow nearly 70 from at least 11 system makers in the future. There is no cost for OEMs and other partners to participate in the certification program.

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Servers that have been certified so far include the Dell EMC PowerEdge R7525, Gigabyte R281-G30, HPE Apollo 6500 Gen10 System, Inspur NF5488A5 and Supermicro A+ Server AS -4124GS-TNR.

Matthew DuBell, a consulting solutions architect for the Business and Analytics Advisors group at St. Louis, Mo.-based World Wide Technology, a top Nvidia AI partner, said the new certification program shows that GPU computing and accelerated computing are "here to stay in the enterprise."

"Nvidia has definitely taken a huge lead in being able to offer these types of programs, and it'll be interesting to see how other players in the market react," he said.