Accelerating AI With GPU Virtualization In The Cloud

In July, VMware acquired Bitfusion, a company whose technology virtualizes compute accelerators with the goal of enabling modern workloads like artificial intelligence and data analytics to take full advantage of systems with GPUs or with FPGAs. Specifically, Bitfusion's software allows for virtual machines to offload compute duties to GPUs, FPGAs, or even other kinds of ASICs. The deal didn't get a ton of attention at the time, but for VMware, it was an important step in realizing its cloud ambitions. "Hardware acceleration for applications delivers efficiency and flexibility into the AI space, including subsets such as machine learning," Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager of VMware's Cloud Platform business unit, wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition. "Unfortunately, hardware accelerators today are deployed with bare-metal practices, which force poor utilization, poor efficiencies, and limit organizations from sharing, abstracting and automating the infrastructure. This provides a perfect opportunity to virtualize them – providing increased sharing of resources and lowering costs."