“Every industry has awoken to the potential of AI,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, NVIDIA.
“We’ve worked with Microsoft to create a lightning-fast AI platform that is available from on-premises with our DGX-1 supercomputer to the Microsoft Azure cloud. With Microsoft’s global reach, every company around the world can now tap the power of AI to transform their business.” he added
The joint optimized platform runs the new Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (formerly CNTK) on NVIDIA GPUs, including the NVIDIA DGX-1 supercomputer, which uses Pascal architecture GPUs with NVLink interconnect technology, and on Azure N-Series virtual machines, currently in preview. This combination delivers unprecedented performance and ease of use when using data for deep learning.
The visual computing firm claims that by implementing AI, companies can make better decisions, offer new products and services faster and provide better customer experiences. In just two years, the number of companies it collaborates with on deep learning has jumped 194x to over 19,000. Industries such as healthcare, life sciences, energy, financial services, automotive and manufacturing are benefiting from AI.
“We’re working hard to empower every organization with AI, so that they can make smarter products and solve some of the world’s most pressing problems,” said Harry Shum, executive vice president of the Artificial Intelligence and Research Group at Microsoft.
“By working closely with NVIDIA and harnessing the power of GPU-accelerated systems, we’ve made Cognitive Toolkit and Microsoft Azure the fastest, most versatile AI platform. AI is now within reach of any business.” Harry added.
The Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit claims to train and evaluate deep learning algorithms faster than other available toolkits, scaling efficiently in a range of environments — from a CPU, to GPUs, to multiple machines — while maintaining accuracy. Both companies have worked closely to accelerate the Cognitive Toolkit on GPU-based systems and in the Microsoft Azure cloud, offering startups and major enterprises greater versatility, faster performance and wider availability.
The duo plan to continue their collaboration to help optimize the Cognitive Toolkit for NVIDIA GPUs in Azure and as part of a hybrid cloud AI platform, when connected to NVIDIA DGX-1 on premises.
