Dell Technologies is expanding its portfolio of generative AI products and services, aiming to help more customers harness the power of artificial intelligence. The company has announced a series of initiatives that build upon its previous generative AI efforts, which have been rolled out gradually since early 2023.
Project Helix: Bringing Large Language Models to On Premises Environments
In May, Dell announced Project Helix in partnership with Nvidia. This initiative aimed to bring the power of large language models (LLMs) to on-premises environments with Dell hardware. In July, Dell and Nvidia unveiled validated designs for running AI inference workloads and professional services to support enterprise deployments, as a result of the Project Helix effort.
Now, Dell is taking another step forward by introducing validated designs for model customization in collaboration with Nvidia. This will assist organizations in fine-tuning AI models to their specific requirements. Additionally, Dell is providing details about its strategy for enabling data for generative AI, which includes an open data lakehouse platform developed in partnership with Starburst, a data query platform vendor.
“Dell is committed to providing the best solutions and options to our customers so that they have the flexibility and resilience in order to address the business outcomes that they’re trying to achieve.” – Carol Wilder, VP for Cross Portfolio Software and Solutions at Dell Technologies
According to Carol Wilder, vice president for Cross Portfolio Software and Solutions at Dell Technologies, the deployment of generative AI on premises is still in its early days. Dell aims to offer the best solutions and options to customers to achieve their desired business outcomes.
Dell Validated Designs for Generative AI: Customizing and Training Models
The initial release of Dell Validated Designs for Generative AI with Nvidia focused on inference. This solution allows organizations to run optimized stacks of Dell and Nvidia hardware, along with optimized software for AI inference. However, with model customization, more resource requirements are necessary in terms of hardware capabilities.
With the introduction of the new model customization offering, Dell aims to empower organizations to fine-tune models that are specifically optimized for their enterprise’s use cases and datasets. Among the use cases expected to benefit from this customization service are virtual assistants, content generation, and software development.
“Being able to fine-tune as well as train generative AI is a process that relies on data, lots and lots of data.” – Carol Wilder, VP for Cross Portfolio Software and Solutions at Dell Technologies
Customization and training of generative AI models depend heavily on data. Dell recognizes that enterprises possess vast amounts of data in their data centers, cloud deployments, and multiple locations. To help organizations fully utilize their data for generative AI, Dell is developing an open data lakehouse platform.
The Dell approach, which adopts a hybrid approach to data, aims to enable query capabilities across on-premises and multi-cloud deployments. By integrating the Starburst Enterprise platform, Dell’s data lakehouse will allow data from diverse sources to be used for data analytics and AI.
“The number one priority for the lakehouse effort is making sure that Dell can accelerate how quickly data science teams and the AI developer teams can get access to data from across the organization.” – Greg Findlen, Senior VP Data Management at Dell
According to Greg Findlen, Senior VP Data Management at Dell, the primary goal of the data lakehouse effort is to expedite access to data for data science and AI development teams. Findlen believes that the growth of generative AI has brought increased focus on the importance of data within enterprises and the need to protect and leverage it for various AI use cases.
Dell Technologies is expanding its generative AI offerings, providing organizations with the tools and capabilities to harness the power of artificial intelligence. With validated designs for model customization and an open data lakehouse platform, Dell aims to offer flexibility and resilience to its customers, enabling them to achieve their desired business outcomes.
