HPE Enters Generative AI Market With A Public Cloud Supercomputer Service

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Tuesday burst into the burgeoning public cloud AI market at HPE Discover 2023 with HPE GreenLake for Large Language Models, a public cloud service that for the first time provides supercomputing in a consumption-based cloud model.

HPE GreenLake For Large Language Models, a form of generative AI, will be powered by HPE Cray XD Supercomputers with Nvidia H100 GPUs. It will will be available by the end of the calendar year starting in North America and in Europe early next year.

HPE said it is already accepting orders for the service, which will be available in colocation facilities starting with QScale in Canada.

HPE is providing a wide range of AI Large Language Model services including strategy, design, operations and management of AI workloads.

“HPE GreenLake for Large Language Models allows our customers to rapidly train, tune and deploy Large Language Models on demand using a multitenant instance of our supercomputing platform, truly a supercomputing cloud combined with our AI software,” said HPE Executive Vice President and General Manager of High Performance Computing Justin Hotard in an HPE webcast.

HPE GreenLake for Large Language Models’ multitenant model provides capability computing services that are not readily available in “existing data centers or in public cloud,” said Hotard.

The HPE public-cloud-based GreenLake for Large Language Models marks a return to the public cloud for HPE, which shuttered its Helion Public Cloud eight years ago. At that time, HPE moved to focus its resources on managed and virtual private cloud. It also puts HPE into the fast-growing public cloud AI market with Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

Until now supercomputers have not been available on demand in a consumption model, said Hotard. “What we are announcing today is that HPE is entering the AI cloud market,” he said.

The new service provides the ability for customers to upload their own text and image data to the public-cloud-based service, said Hotard. “Users can upload their own data, ensure it is protected, and train and tune their own customized model solely for their use,” he said.

The HPE public cloud Large Language Model offering includes German AI startup’s Aleph Alpha’s highly regarded Luminous natural language capability.

“Luminous was actually trained using HPE supercomputers and HPE’s AI software and has already been implemented by various organizations in health care, financial services and in the legal profession as a digital assistant,” said Hotard.

The Luminous offering supports English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri in a prepared statement called the new offering part of a “generational shift” that is every bit as transformational as the web, mobile and cloud. “HPE is making AI, once the domain of well-funded government labs and the global cloud giants, accessible to all by delivering a range of AI applications starting with Large Language Models that run on HPE’s proven sustainable supercomputers,” he said. “Now, organizations can embrace AI to drive innovation, disrupt markets, and achieve breakthroughs with an on-demand cloud service that trains, tunes and deploys models at scale and responsibly.”