Need AI? Dell backs up the truck and tips out servers, storage, blueprints

Dell continues to push itself as a one-stop shop for enterprise AI infrastructure with a wave of products and services, including updates to servers, storage, and software to expand its offerings. At the SC25 High Performance Computing event in St. Louis, Missouri, Dell was keen to talk up its partnership with Nvidia as a …

[Anonymous Coward]

"AI agents, the new must-have capability in the AI world"

You mean the new mustn't-have, surely.

[Anonymous Coward]

One-stop?

Yeah, it slices, dices, and look at that shine on the floor! The New Shimmer of virtualization... er ... hyperconvergence... er... AI... er... <insert whatever's hot this quarter>.

Gone are the days when Dell simply made solid, dependable, and cost-effective platforms for whatever _you_ choose to run _your_ business. Their acquisition and subsequent ruination of EMC tells the whole story -- the goal is to lock the customer up as tightly as possible without regard to cost or quality.

The fact is, AI really requires the same thing as high-end databases, compute machines, and everything else that good computers (including mainframes) have offered since the beginning of the digital age. Market it as you will, but either you can provide that, or you can't. I think Dell's spreading itself too thin and generalizing too much, and hope that they eventually come to their senses about being all things to all people. Time will tell.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: One-stop?

Dell have a load of AI servers, and a bunch of the 4 x gpu ones appear to be more or less the same. I made this list some time ago, I suppose its the same still.

XE9780 - 2 x xeon - 4TB DDR5 - 8 x B200/B300 (10 fucking U's, nuts on something that isn't a blade server)

XE9785 - 2 x epyc - 3TB DDR5 - 8x AMD gpus or 8 x B300 (3U)

XE7740 - 2 x xeon - 4TB DDR5 - 8 x intel gaudi or 8 x H200 (4U)

XE7745 - 2 x epyc - 3TB DDR5 - 8 x gaudi or H200 (4U)

XE9680L - 2 x xeon - 4TB DDR5 - 8 x B200 (4U liquid cooled)

XE9685L - 2 x epyc - 4TB DDR5 - 8 x B200 (4U liquid cooled)

XE9680 - 2 x xeon - 4TB DDR5 - 8 x H100/200 or AMD Mi300x or intel gaudi (6U)

XE9640 - 2 x xeon - 4TB DDR5 - 4 x H100 (2U)

XE8640 - 2 x xeon - 4TB DDR5 - 4 x H100 (4U)

R760xa - 2 x xeon - 8TB DDR5 - 4 x 400W pcie gpu (2U)

As far as I can remember from my research, just about all of the 4 x gpu intel versions of these servers are using the regular R750 system board with additional power distribution to support all the extra power needed for the gpus. The gpu baseboards are all made by the gpu manfacturers and connect to the system board using slimline cables (8 x gen4 pcie lanes per SL cable)