HPE announces new AI cloud computing service

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has unveiled a new cloud computing service, crafted for powering complex artificial intelligence (AI) systems similar to ChatGPT.

The HPE GreenLake for Large Language Models (LLMs) is being used by a select group of customers, with a broader roll-out planned for North America later this year and Europe in 2024.

HPE enters the AI race

Entering this domain places HPE on a competitive stage against industry titans like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. These companies are already revamping their data centres to meet the growing appetite for AI-driven services like chatbots and image generators.

AI technology necessitates a shift in data centre design compared to traditional cloud computing architectures, as servers must link together to create an intelligent network capable of functioning as a single powerful resource.

HPE will leverage its existing technologies like the Frontier supercomputer, which is currently the fastest computer in the world.

Justin Hotard, HPE’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of High-Performance Computing and AI, emphasised that their service is ‘complementary and very different than what our fellow cloud partners provide – it is not trivial or freely accessible’.

In partnership with Aleph Alpha, a German AI startup, HPE is set to offer a ready-to-use LLM service capable of handling tasks requiring text and image processing and analysis. Users will gain access to Luminous, a pre-trained large language model from Aleph Alpha available in multiple languages. The service allows customers to leverage their own data, train, and fine-tune a customised model, offering real-time insights based on proprietary knowledge​​.

Jonas Andrulis, the Founder and CEO of Aleph Alpha, praised the efficiency and speed of HPE’s supercomputers and AI software.

“By using HPE’s supercomputers and AI software, we efficiently and quickly trained Luminous, a large language model for critical businesses such as banks, hospitals, and law firms to use as a digital assistant to speed up decision-making and save time and resources,” said Andrulis.

In addition to the new cloud service, HPE also announced an expansion to its AI inferencing compute solutions. The newly released HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers, optimised for AI workloads that employs Nvidia’s hardware to provide a faster performing solution compared to its previous models.

With these steps, HPE could position itself as a unique player in the AI cloud computing realm.

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