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HPE & NVIDIA Team Up to Build Japan's Fastest AI Supercomputer

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE - Free Report) has partnered with NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA - Free Report) to construct Japan’s fastest artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer for the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (“AIST”). This new supercomputer, named ABCI (AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure) 3.0, aims to significantly enhance AI capabilities and support extensive research, development and innovation across various sectors.

The collaboration leverages Hewlett Packard Enterprise's expertise in high-performance computing and NVIDIA's advanced accelerated computing platform. The ABCI 3.0 will utilize HPE Cray XD systems integrated with NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs and NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking. This combination is designed to meet the increasing demands of AI workloads, achieving a theoretical maximum performance of approximately 6.2 exaflops of half-precision (16-bit) performance. This makes ABCI 3.0 the fastest AI supercomputer in Japan and one of the most advanced globally.

ABCI 3.0 will be offered as a cloud service to public and private organizations, facilitating advancements in AI-driven research and development. This initiative supports large foundational models for generative AI, accelerating progress in fields such as genome sequencing, materials informatics and the development of large language models. With such a powerful AI infrastructure, researchers and enterprises can leverage advanced computational resources, driving innovation and creating significant value.

The development of ABCI 3.0 addresses the increasing demand for generative AI and computational resources. Dr. Yoshio Tanaka, Executive Officer at AIST, emphasized the supercomputer's importance in meeting the needs of the AI community. By delivering exceptional machine learning performance, ABCI 3.0 will support large-scale foundational models built from extensive datasets, including image, acoustic and sensor information. This will enhance the ability of public and private organizations to advance research, drive innovation and create value from generative AI.

The adoption of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's solutions by organizations worldwide can be attributed to ongoing innovations and enhancements that continuously improve its solution's capabilities. A growing customer base is likely to boost investors’ confidence in HPE stock. Shares of the company have demonstrated decent performance so far this year. The stock has jumped 26.5% year to date compared with the Zacks Computer – Integrated Systems industry’s growth of 7.7%.

HPE Expands Its Footprint in Supercomputing

Over the past year, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has made significant strides in the supercomputing arena, securing several high-profile agreements and collaborations.

One notable partnership is with the University of Stuttgart, where HPE is constructing two new supercomputers, named Hunter and Herder, for the university’s High-Performance Computing Center. In the UK, Hewlett Packard Enterprise landed a substantial deal with the government, investing £225 million in a national AI Research Resource at the University of Bristol. October 2023 saw HPE deploying an AI supercomputer for France's CRIANN, designed to accelerate scientific research.

It is also building a supercomputer for Eni, one of the world’s largest energy providers, in collaboration with Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD - Free Report) . Named HPC6, the supercomputer will be built with HPE Cray EX4000 systems featuring Advanced Micro Devices EPYC CPUs and Instinct accelerators.

Adding to its impressive portfolio, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has deployed the Aurora supercomputer at several locations, further solidifying its position in the supercomputing market. Earlier this year, it deployed the Aurora supercomputer to Argonne National Laboratory. The supercomputer is developed through a private-public partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy, Argonne National Laboratory and Intel Corporation (INTC - Free Report) .

Aurora is based on the HPE Cray EX supercomputer and is built to handle the immense size and complexity of exascale computing. It also features HPE Slingshot, 63,744 Intel Data Center GPU Max units and 21,248 Intel Xeon CPU Max Series processors.

Continuous new deal wins for deploying and building supercomputers are driving Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s server segment sales. Revenues from the server segment soared 18% year over year and 15% sequentially to $3.87 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2024, mainly driven by strong demand for its AI servers as well as traditional server systems.

The AI system product revenues more than doubled sequentially to more than $900 million in the quarter. Increased demand, along with better availability of NVIDIA’s high-powered semiconductors, led to a robust surge in AI server sales.

Conclusion

Hewlett Packard Enterprise continues to benefit from the growing demand for artificial intelligence, machine learning and high-performance computing solutions. HPE's consistent advancements and strategic partnerships in supercomputing highlight its crucial role in driving innovation and technological progress across various industries.

Currently, Hewlett Packard Enterprise carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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