IBM claims it has the fastest cloud for deep learning and artificial intelligence (AI) after publishing benchmark tests which show NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU accelerators on the IBM Cloud can provide up to 2.8 times more performance than the previous generation in certain cases.
The tests, when fleshed out, will enable organisations to quickly create advanced AI applications on the cloud. “Deep learning techniques are a key driver behind the increased demand for and sophistication of AI applications,” the company noted. “However, training a deep learning model to do a specific task is a compute-heavy process that can be time and cost-intensive.”
IBM purports to be the first of the large cloud providers to offer NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPUs. Separate tests were carried out, first by IBM engineers and then by cloud simulation platform provider Rescale. For the IBM tests, engineers trained a deep learning model for image classification using two NVIDIA P100 cards on Bluemix bare metal, before comparing the same process to two Tesla K80 GPU cards.
The second performance benchmark, from Rescale, also picked up time reduction on deep learning training, based on its ScaleX platform, which features capabilities for deep learning software as a service (SaaS).
“Innovation in AI is happening at a breakneck speed thanks to advances in cloud computing,” said John Considine, IBM general manager for cloud infrastructure services in a statement. “As the first major cloud provider to offer the NVIDIA Tesla P100 GPU, IBM Cloud is providing enterprises with accelerated performance so they can quickly and more cost-effectively create sophisticated AI and cognitive experiences for their end users.”
Another cloud vendor utilising NVIDIA’s Tesla P100 GPU – although not of the same scale as IBM – is Tencent, who made the announcement back in March. As this publication noted at the time, virtually every major cloud player is an NVIDIA customer of some sort, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, and Microsoft.
You can find out more about the IBM tests here.
