AI partnerships were a major focus at Dell Technologies World 2024, which took place in Las Vegas from May 20 to May 23. Some of the key highlights from the conference included:
Five new AI-capable laptops.
Increased collaborations between NVIDIA and Dell’s AI Factory program.
New partnerships with Hugging Face, Meta, and Microsoft.
Dell unveils AI capabilities on XPS, Latitude, and Inspiron Laptops
The latest Dell PCs are embracing the generative AI trend, with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Series processor being featured in five new models:
XPS 13, set to launch later this year with preorders starting on May 20 in the U.S. at a starting price of $1,299. Preorders for the U.K., Germany, France, and Japan start on May 21.
Inspiron 14, also coming later this year with pricing details yet to be announced.
Inspiron 14 Plus, scheduled for release later this year with preorders starting on May 20 in the U.S. at a starting price of $1,099. Preorders for the U.K., Germany, France, and Japan start on May 21.
Latitude 5455 and Latitude 7455, both set to launch later this year with pricing details to be announced.
According to Dell, the Qualcomm processor offers 45 NPU TOPS, enabling devices to run large language models like Meta’s Llama 2 on-device.
AI Factory is a Dell-guided environment for AI deployment
During a news pre-briefing on May 16, Dell’s Senior Vice President of Product Marketing, Sam Grocott, mentioned that AI Factory is not a single product but rather a roadmap of potential offerings based on customer needs.
Furthermore, Dell’s professional services now include Microsoft Copilot, Copilot for Sales, Copilot for Security, and GitHub Copilot, aiming to simplify the process of discovering, validating, and designing generative AI solutions integrated into existing workflows.
Dell’s Senior Vice President of Product Marketing, Varun Chhabra, highlighted the digital assistant services designed to assist businesses in deploying digital assistants seamlessly.
AI Factory With NVIDIA
In addition to AI Factory, Dell also offers AI Factory With NVIDIA, leveraging NVIDIA AI technology, infrastructure, and networking solutions. Dell has expanded this partnership since its initial announcement at NVIDIA GTC in March by introducing:
Accelerator services for retrieval-augmented generation.
Professional services for digital assistants.
NVIDIA NIM.
Automated deployment of NVIDIA solutions.
Dell PowerEdge.
Dell NativeEdge.
Chhabra mentioned that the accelerator services for RAG allow developers to experiment with generative AI conveniently on mobile devices for easy demonstration within their organizations.
SEE: Humans outperform AI on many tasks, Stanford researchers found in a study of AI trends in business.
AI at the Edge
Another outcome of the Dell/NVIDIA collaboration is the incorporation of NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs into Dell PowerEdge servers, specifically the Dell PowerEdge XE9680L server, which will feature eight NVIDIA Blackwell 200 GPUs and direct liquid cooling.
In addition, NVIDIA AI Enterprise software is being integrated with Dell NativeEdge to automate NVIDIA software deployment within the Dell edge orchestration platform.
At the time of writing, availability dates for the Dell PowerEdge XE9680L server and other edge hardware had not been disclosed.
Expanded partnerships with Hugging Face, Meta, and Microsoft
Dell’s collaboration with Hugging Face has expanded to include the Dell + Hugging Face Enterprise Hub, offering a seamless pathway for deploying open-source AI models from Hugging Face on Dell infrastructure.
Dell PowerEdge servers optimized for Meta AI
With Meta, Dell has optimized select PowerEdge servers for Llama 3, with the PowerEdge XE9680 featuring 8GPU support for enhanced performance and safety when running Llama 3. Dell will also provide deployment guides for Llama 3 to assist customers in deploying and optimizing the model.
Azure AI integration with Dell APEX Cloud Platform
In collaboration with Microsoft, Dell is introducing Azure AI capabilities to the Dell APEX Cloud Platform with Microsoft Azure, facilitating the integration of on-premises Azure AI services with the same APIs available in Azure. This integration aims to simplify the use of AI vision, translation, speech services, and more for organizations.
PowerStore and Dell APEX receive upgrades
AI advancements are also evident across other Dell product lines, with major announcements at Dell Technologies World including PowerStore Prime, a performance enhancement and new features for the PowerStore all-flash storage platform. PowerStore Prime will be available to customers through a free software update, offering new synchronous replication for file and block, enhancements to the metro volume feature, and customizable data protection policies.
Additionally, Dell APEX now features an AI add-on called AIOps, an IT operations management tool leveraging AI and machine learning to enhance observability, application monitoring, and incident management in on-premises or multicloud environments. APEX AIOps includes a chatbot named AIOps Assistant, capable of answering queries about various Dell infrastructure products. APEX AIOps is accessible through Dell APEX Navigator, a service for block and file storage in the public cloud or persistent storage in Kubernetes.
As of the time of writing, release dates for the PowerStore and APEX upgrades were not provided.
TechRepublic is covering Dell Technologies World 2024 remotely.
