Nvidia is talking up AI at Computex 2021, which is returning to Taiwan as a hybrid in-person and virtual event, that will be held tomorrow. Nvidia and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) last week flipped the “on” switch for Perlmutter, billed as the world’s fastest supercomputer for AI workloads.

The new Base Command platform gives developers access to the cloud-hosted computing power of Nvidia DGX SuperPOD AI supercomputers and NetApp data management tools.

Nvidia touted Base Command as a way for enterprise developers to “quickly move their AI projects from prototypes to production” with software designed “for large-scale, multi-user and multi-team AI development workflows hosted either on-premises or in the cloud,” the company said. The software development platform enables numerous researchers and data scientists to “simultaneously work on accelerated computing resources, helping enterprises maximize the productivity of both their expert developers and their valuable AI infrastructure,” the company said.

Base Command offers a single pane of glass interface to view AI software development on integrated monitoring and reporting dashboards, with command-line APIs available.

Nvidia also announced the availability of new AI-optimized servers from major computer manufacturers as part of its Nvidia-certified systems program. The new systems are certified to run Nvidia AI Enterprise software and are either available now or coming later this year from OEMs. Participating companies include Advantech, Altos, ASRock Rack, Asus, Dell Technologies, Gigabyte, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo, Nettrix, QCT, and Supermicro.

New x86 servers based on Nvidia Ampere architecture GPUs are available now, the company said. Nvidia-certified systems using Bluefield-2 DPUs will come out later this year and non-x86 machines powered by Arm CPUs will arrive in 2022. Manuvir Das, Nvidia head of enterprise computing, said:

“Enterprises across every industry need to support their innovative work in AI on traditional data centre infrastructure. The open, growing ecosystem of Nvidia-certified systems provides unprecedented customer choice in servers validated by Nvidia to power world-class AI.”

Das said the new servers will become “some of the highest-volume x86 servers used in mainstream data centres, bringing the power of AI to a wide range of industries, including health care, manufacturing, retail, and financial services.”

The certified systems are expected to run software such as the Nvidia AI Enterprise suite of AI and data analytics software on VMware vSphere, Nvidia Omniverse Enterprise for design collaboration and advanced simulation, and Red Hat OpenShift for AI development, with additional support for Cloudera data engineering and machine learning modelling tools.

INTEL 5G SOLUTION 5000

Intel 5G Solutions 5000 is an M.2 module and will serve as an easy way for manufacturers to add 5G support to their products. Intel says that the module has been certified for 5G use with carriers across the globe, and is said to deliver five times faster speeds as compared to its Gigabit LTE technology for laptops.

It will be available in more than 30 laptops by the end of next year, and in a few Acer, HP, and Asus laptops later this year itself. Since Intel already sold its modem business, the majority of it to Apple, the module has been designed in partnership with MediaTek and Fibocom. MediaTek developed the 5G modem for which Intel provided specifications, and Fibocom built the module and handled global certifications.

Intel’s new 11th gen CPUs for slim and light laptops are basically upgraded Core i7-1185G7 and i5-1135G7 from last year. These chips support Wi-Fi 6E connectivity and Intel claims 25% overall application performance over the competition.  Chris Walker, corporate vice president and general manager of mobility client platforms at Intel commented:

“We’ve taken the world’s best processor for thin-and-light Windows laptops and made the experience even better with the addition of our two new 11th Gen Intel Core processors with Intel Iris Xe graphics.”

The Core i7-1195G7 benefits from Turbo Boost Max 3.0 and its fastest core can go up to 5GHz, thus outperforming AMD’s top Ryzen 7 5800U processor. Comparing the performance between the two, Intel says, that its new Core i7-1195G7 is 93 %  faster for video editing,136%  faster for Adobe Lightroom Photo Merge, 98%  faster for Adobe Premiere Pro Scene Detect, 82%  faster for DaVinci Resolve, and 156% faster for Cyberlink Powerdirector.

The Core i5-1155G7 comes with a 2.5GHz base frequency and 4.5GHz Max single-core turbo frequency. It will be available in more than 60 laptops before year-end, including those from Acer, ASUS, Lenovo, and MSI. At Computex 2021, Intel also demoed its 12th gen Alder Lake for both Desktops and Laptops.

Alder Lake will be a significant update for laptops, as Intel will bring 10nm processors, PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 RAM to mobile versions.