At its Cisco Live 2024 event in Las Vegas, Cisco has unveiled a groundbreaking AI cluster solution developed in partnership with NVIDIA. This innovation, set to redefine data center operations, would align with Cisco’s strategic initiative to streamline networking through its Cisco Networking Cloud vision.

The new solution, Cisco Nexus HyperFabric AI cluster, integrates Cisco’s advanced AI-native networking with NVIDIA’s accelerated computing capabilities and robust data storage solutions provided by VAST, facilitating a powerful platform for generative AI applications.

The solution is designed to simplify the deployment and management of AI infrastructures, allowing businesses to focus more on innovation and less on the intricacies of IT operations. Cisco‘s Global Networking Trends Report indicates a significant shift towards AI-driven network automation, with a majority of IT leaders planning to implement AI-enabled tools for comprehensive network management across various domains. This integration aims to address the challenges of setting up AI infrastructures, including the procurement of advanced computing equipment and the development of efficient cooling systems to handle the immense heat generation.

“The Nexus HyperFabric AI cluster solution is competitively differentiated,” said Vijay Bhagavath, Research Vice President, IDC. “It leverages Cisco’s overall portfolio strength, new cloud-managed subscriptions model, and the Cisco-NVIDIA partnership, among other aspects, for capturing wallet share in Enterprise AI Datacenter Switching and Software Ops solutions.”

High-Volume, High-Speed AI Workloads

Cisco and NVIDIA’s collaboration would promise to deliver a cloud-operated, enterprise-ready AI platform that not only enhances operational simplicity but also ensures high scalability and security for on-premises deployments. This could particularly be crucial as businesses increasingly require infrastructure capable of supporting high-volume, high-speed AI workloads securely.

“Generative AI requires purpose-built infrastructure and software that enables enterprises to securely turn their data into fuel for business transformation,” said Kevin Deierling, Senior Vice President of Networking at NVIDIA. “NVIDIA and Cisco are providing an enterprise-ready AI platform and control plane to simplify deployment of the accelerated computing, networking and software needed for generative AI workloads.”

The Nexus HyperFabric AI cluster will feature Cisco’s “cutting-edge” Ethernet switching technology and NVIDIA’s AI Enterprise software, combined with the high-performance capabilities of NVIDIA’s GPUs and data processing units. This comprehensive solution will be managed via Cisco’s cloud, offering seamless operations across data centers, colocation facilities, and edge sites.

“While the promise of AI is clear, the path forward for many just starting out is not. Customers often face economic and operational challenges to get an AI stack up and running,” said Jonathan Davidson, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Networking. “Cisco is committed to making the deployment and operation of AI infrastructure simpler. Together with NVIDIA, we are delivering a simple-to-deploy, cloud-operated AI-stack solution for on-premises deployments that builds on our Cisco Networking Cloud platform vision for automation and simplicity.”

This AI solution may be available for early testing to a limited number of customers in Q4 of CY 2024; general release is anticipated soon after.