New Microsoft Azure VMs target generative AI developers

New virtual machines for Microsoft Azure allow developers to create generative AI apps that can be scaled to work with thousands of Nvidia H100 GPUs. The ND H100 v5 VM series on Azure, which works in tandem with Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking, boosts the performance of large-scale deployments by companies such as OpenAI, creators of the much talked about ChatGPT, and Nvidia's chips. The new supercomputing system in the cloud provides the type of infrastructure required to handle the latest large-scale AI training models, according to Matt Vegas, principal product manager for Azure HPC and AI at Microsoft. "Generative AI applications are rapidly evolving and adding unique value across nearly every industry," Vegas wrote in a blog post this week. "From the newly released AI-powered Bing and Edge to AI-powered assistance in Microsoft Dynamics 365, AI is becoming a pervasive component of software and how we interact with it. We want to ensure that our AI infrastructure will be there to pave the way."