Technology · United States

Dell Expands AI Data Platform to Ground Agents in Enterprise Context

Credited to HPCwire · hpcwire.com · 19h ago

Dell AI Data Platform, the data foundation of the Dell AI Factory, expands with new data orchestration and storage capabilities

ROUND ROCK, Texas, Oct. 6, 2026 — Dell Technologies is expanding the Dell AI Data Platform so AI systems deliver better answers, cost less to run and reach production faster, giving applications and agents trusted, current context from a company’s own data.

In most cases the model isn’t the bottleneck to achieving enterprise scale for AI. The data is. A company’s most useful information sits in files, databases, cloud services and systems across multiple sites. Most of it was created long before anyone expected an AI agent to read it. It was never labeled, connected or organized with a machine reader in mind. As a result, agents burn tokens reconstructing answers that should already exist. Every query means more steps, more compute, more cost and slower, less trustworthy results.

The Dell AI Data Platform is built end to end, from where data is stored to where agents use it. Storage moves critical data to accelerated compute without bottlenecks; orchestration connects and prepares it; analytics and search transform and index it. NVIDIA Nemotron Retriever models enable document parsing, embedding and reranking. NVIDIA cuVS accelerates vector indexing and search. Because every layer runs on one platform, everything it produces traces back to governed data the customer already owns. Agents return to the same documents, history and decisions repeatedly, and most systems rebuild their understanding from scratch every time. That means answering the same two questions on every request: what does this term mean and how does it relate to everything else? Dell is extending the Dell AI Data Platform with three new features to answer both at once.

The Unified Semantic Layer, Knowledge Graph and Knowledge Agents hold a customer’s most valuable and sensitive information, so they stay inside the platform in the customer’s data center. The platform builds context from that data, keeps it current as the business changes and shares it across every application and agent, without locking customers into any single model, data or storage provider.

Acceleration and Security Built into the Data Path

Business context is only reliable if data is accurate, current and governed from source to application. Customers should not have to adopt another proprietary layer to accelerate different parts of their data environment. Dell brings acceleration into the data engines themselves, working with NVIDIA across the data path. Data must be transformed and analyzed, then reach accelerated compute fast enough to keep GPUs saturated and stay protected along the way. Dell data and storage advancements include:

Dell is expanding Dell AI Data Platform implementation services across its data and storage engines to move organizations from deployment to production results quickly and reliably. Dell Services establish a production-ready foundation, activating the platform’s analytics, processing, search and orchestration capabilities while keeping the platform tuned to the demands of AI workloads.

“Data without context is just noise. Most enterprises have spent years making their data accessible,” said Arthur Lewis, president of Dell’s Infrastructure Solutions Group. “That’s not the same as making it usable. An agent that can find a customer record but doesn’t know what it means, how it connects to everything else, or whether it can be trusted isn’t intelligent. It’s just fast. The companies that solve it won’t just deploy AI faster or run more agents. They’ll get more out of the data they already have.”

Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) helps organizations and individuals build their digital future and transform how they work, live and play. The company provides customers with the industry’s broadest and most innovative technology and services portfolio for the AI era.

TechnologyUnited States

HPE Launches Gen13 ProLiant Servers for HPC and AI Workloads

Credited to HPCwire · hpcwire.com1h ago

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HPE today unveiled four new ProLiant Gen13 Servers, giving customers AMD EPYC-based compute power for running a variety of agentic AI, high performance analytics, and modeling and simulation workloads in both traditional 19-inch and new 21-inch OCP rack configurations.

Two of the new ProLiant servers–the ProLiant DL585a Gen13 and the ProLiant DL525 Gen13–are standard 19-inch rack designs designed for a range of workloads. The other two new servers–the ProLiant XD245 and XD285–are based on the OCP’s new 21-inch rack design, and are specifically targeted to AI and HPC workloads.

ProLiant DL585a Gen13

HPE’s new ProLiant DL585a Gen13, which will become available in March, is a 10U server based on the standard 19-inch rack configuration that’s designed for emerging AI inference, virtualization, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), model fine-tuning, analytics, and agentic AI workloads.

The DL585a is a high-density server that houses two 6th Gen AMD EPYC 9006 SP7 processors, providing up to 256 cores each. It can additionally be outfitted with up to eight double-wide PCIe GPUs from Nvidia or AMD. The DL585a features up to 32 DIMM slots for DDR5 RAM running at 8000MT/s or MRDIMM (Multiplexed Rank Dual Inline Memory Module) memory running at 12800 MT/s.

This server features an integrated 8x QSFP fabric (with an Nvidia switchboard). It relies on Nvidia Bluefield 3 and Bluefield 4 DPUs for north/south traffic and Nvidia ConnectX-8 or CX9 SuperNIC Ethernet cards for east/west traffic. The server features up to six front and two rear PCIe slots providing 16-channel PCIe Gen6 ports, and one more rear port providing OCP 3.0 or four-channel PCI3Gen4. Dual power supplies provide 3.2kW for the system board and there’s room for up to 12 additional 3.2kW power supplies for additional GPUs.

ProLiant DL525 Gen13

The ProLiant DL525 Gen13, which will become available in November, is a slim, 1U server equipped with a single AMD EPYC 9006 SP7 processor with up to 256 processor cores. It can be equipped with up to 4TB of 16-channel DDR memory providing 8000 MT/s or 2TB of MRDIMM memory at 12800MT/s.

The new DL525 sports up to four PCIe Gen6 slots (or 1 OCP 3.0 slot) in the front and another 3 PCIe Gen6 slots (or one 1 OCP 3.0 slot) in the rear. It’s an air-cooled design with dual 60-watt common redundant power supply (CRPS).

HPE says that the DL525’s combination of core density, memory bandwidth, and I/O makes it suitable for AI inference, simulation and modeling, electronic design automation (EDA), virtualization, analytics, and other compute-intensive workloads.

ProLiant XD245 and ProLiant XD285

The new ProLiant XD245 and XD285 are new servers based on Open Compute Project (OCP’s) new 21-inch standard ORV3 racks. The XD245 is a liquid-cooled, 2U server designed to handle four processors, which gives it a 2U-4N rating. Its sibling, the XD285, is an air-cooled 2U server designed for two processors, giving it a 2U_2N in ODP-speak. HPE didn’t specific its availability.

Both the XD245 and XD285 are equipped with next-gen AMD Venice SP7 processors, feature 256 cores per processor and a 600 Watt thermal design power (TDP) envelope. The XD brothers can be equipped with up to 32 DDR5 Registered DIMM (RDIMM), a type of DRAM that runs at 8000MT/s, or 32 slots of the faster MRDIMM providing 12800MT/s. Networking is handled through 2 16-channel PCIe expansion slots per node. It supports 400GB and 800Gb Ethernet, InfiniBand, or Slingshot networks.

HPE says the XD245 and XD285 are designed for HPC workloads, such as running large-scale simulations, including computer-aided engineering (CAE), weather and climate modeling, scientific research, and financial modeling. Both will become available in April.

All of the new ProLiant servers come with iLO 8, the next-generation of HPE’s self-managed encryption capability. This release introduces auto self-encryption drives (Auto-SED) capabilities, which means “encryption stops being a setting someone has to remember and becomes a property of the server,” writes Aaron Lamond, HPE’s product marketing manager, in a blog.

iLO8 also introduces the new multi-party authorization (MPA) capability, which makes high-impact actions, such as key provisioning and secure erase, only possible if two or more people approve it.

Original · HPCwire

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Technology · United States

Cisco Expands Validated SONiC Across Nexus N9000 for Open AI Fabrics

Credited to Converge Digest · convergedigest.com · 19h ago

Photograph · Converge Digest

Cisco is expanding its validated SONiC network operating system across the Nexus N9000 portfolio, creating a supported open-networking model that spans both conventional leaf-spine networks and high-performance AI fabrics. The move extends SONiC beyond the build-your-own model commonly associated with hyperscalers by pairing a precompiled, security-hardened SONiC image with Cisco hardware lifecycle management, Nexus Dashboard visibility, and end-to-end Cisco TAC support. Cisco says the model is intended for enterprises, neoclouds, web-scale operators, and AI infrastructure providers that want open networking without maintaining their own SONiC distribution.

The first configurations are available now on Nexus N9000 systems using Cisco Cloud Scale silicon for high-density 100G and 400G leaf-spine networks, as well as the N9100 family based on NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet silicon for loss-sensitive backend AI fabrics. Cisco says support for Silicon One-powered Nexus N9000 platforms is coming next, which would extend the validated SONiC model across its multi-silicon Nexus switching portfolio. The same underlying Nexus hardware can support different software paths, including NX-OS, ACI, or Cisco-validated SONiC, depending on the platform and deployment model.

The operational layer is an important part of the announcement. Cisco takes upstream SONiC builds and produces a precompiled image that it says has undergone security hardening and regression testing across supported silicon. Nexus Dashboard provides common visibility across NX-OS, ACI, and Cisco-validated SONiC nodes, including telemetry, anomaly detection, and health monitoring. Cisco TAC then covers the hardware, optics, Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI), Free Range Routing (FRR) stack, and compiled SONiC image. Cisco positions the architecture for AI infrastructure ranging from roughly 8,000 to more than 32,000 GPUs, with 400G/800G N9100 and Cloud Scale configurations supporting RoCEv2 congestion-control mechanisms including PFC and ECN.

Available now — Cisco-validated SONiC on N9000 with Cloud Scale for 100G/400G leaf-spine networks and N9100 with NVIDIA Spectrum-X for backend AI fabrics.

Coming next — Cisco Silicon One-powered N9000 support, extending validated SONiC across Cisco’s multi-silicon Nexus portfolio.

Software — Precompiled, security-hardened Cisco-validated SONiC binary with regression testing across supported silicon.

Operations — Nexus Dashboard visibility across SONiC, NX-OS and ACI, including telemetry, anomaly detection and health monitoring.

Support — Cisco TAC supports switches, optics, SAI, FRR and the compiled SONiC image under a single support model.

AI scale — Targeted at AI infrastructure providers scaling from 8,000 to 32,000+ GPU clusters.

Open networking — Cisco continues to support DIY community SONiC on Cisco 8000 while positioning validated SONiC on Nexus N9000 for customers seeking a supported operating model.

Cisco describes the distinction this way: build-your-own SONiC remains available on Cisco 8000 systems for hyperscalers and operators that maintain their own distributions, while Cisco-validated SONiC on Nexus N9000 is aimed at organizations seeking a production-ready binary and vendor accountability. Cisco also notes that it is a primary maintainer of FRR, participates in the SONiC Technical Steering Committee, and contributes to SAI development.

The significant development here is not simply that Nexus hardware can run SONiC. Cisco had already introduced the N9100 with the ability to run NX-OS or SONiC when it expanded its NVIDIA Spectrum-X portfolio in October 2025. Today’s announcement defines a broader operational model around SONiC: Cisco is validating and hardening the software, integrating it with Nexus Dashboard, supporting it through TAC, and extending the approach across multiple ASIC families.

That makes the announcement relevant to a larger debate around open Ethernet for AI infrastructure. SONiC emerged largely from hyperscale environments where operators possessed the engineering resources to integrate and maintain their own networking software. As neoclouds, enterprises and sovereign AI operators build increasingly large GPU clusters, the question becomes whether SONiC’s disaggregated model can be retained while shifting more integration and lifecycle responsibility back to the equipment supplier.

Cisco is effectively offering both models. Customers with substantial internal network engineering resources can continue using community SONiC and Cisco 8000 hardware, while Nexus customers can use a Cisco-supported distribution spanning Cloud Scale and NVIDIA Spectrum-X, with Silicon One support planned next. The latter is particularly notable because it gives Cisco a common open NOS strategy across multiple switching-silicon architectures rather than tying SONiC to one ASIC family. Cisco has not specified an availability date for the forthcoming Silicon One N9000 support.

Networking — Nexus • Silicon One • Cisco 8000 • SONiC

AI Infrastructure — Ethernet AI fabrics, Spectrum-X systems, Silicon One switching, optics, security and infrastructure management.

October 28, 2025 · AI Networking Cisco Expands AI Infrastructure Portfolio with NVIDIA The original N9100 launch introduced Spectrum-X silicon and NX-OS/SONiC software flexibility to the Nexus portfolio.