Deep learning continues to gather steam in corporate computing, and IBM and Nvidia are teaming up to help accelerate the foundation behind artificial intelligence breakthroughs. The two companies are collaborating on a deep learning solution that melds technology from both companies in a bid to speed up the process of training computers to think and learn more like humans do. A new software toolkit available today called IBM PowerAI is designed to run on the recently announced IBM server built for artificial intelligence that features Nvidia NVLink technology optimized for IBM's Power Architecture. The hardware-software solution provides more than two times the performance of comparable servers with four graphics processing units (GPUs) running AlexNet with Caffe. The same four-GPU Power-based configuration running AlexNet with BVLC Caffe can also outperform 8-M40 GPU-based x86 configurations, making it the world's fastest commercially available enterprise systems platform on two versions of a key deep learning framework, the companies said.

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IBM today announced the launch of the aptly-named IBM Power Systems S822LC for High Performance Computing. Its unwieldy name betrays the fact that this is a really interesting product. Together with Nvidia, IBM built this new system specifically for artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced analytics use cases. What makes this new server so fast for running this kind of software, though, isn't just the pure processor power from the CPUs and GPUs. IBM is also using Nvidia's NVLink high-speed interconnect that allows the CPUs and GPUs to communicate significantly faster than over the standard PCIe bus you'll find in a common desktop computer.