China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. today is teaming up with Intel Corp. to optimize its data center technologies for what it says is the convergence between high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.

Lenovo, which has built several of the world’s top 500 supercomputers, believes its HPC infrastructure is the ideal platform to tackle the world’s greatest computational challenges, which AI software is uniquely poised to solve. But the most advanced AI algorithms require massive computing power, and Lenovo reckons it can gain a strong advantage by optimizing its infrastructure to leverage Intel’s latest processor technologies.

To that end, the companies today announced a “multiyear global collaboration” to accelerate the convergence of HPC and AI. The collaboration builds on an existing partnership that has already seen Lenovo combine its Neptune liquid cooling technology with Intel’s 2ndGen Xeon Scalable processors – a hardware combination that’s already used in 173 of the world’s top 500 fastest supercomputers.

Going forward, the companies said, the plan is to optimize Lenovo’s cloud-based TruScale Infrastructure service with Intel technologies including its Xe computing architecture, Optane DC persistent memory, oneAPI programming framework, and Xeon Scalable processors, which come with built-in AI accelerators called Deep Learning Boost.

In addition to hardware, there will also be a focus on the software needed to power the next-generation infrastructure. Lenovo said it will optimize its LiCO HPC/AI software stack on Intel’s technologies and align this with the Intel oneAPI framework. They will also work together on new “DAOS advanced storage frameworks” that can help applications run on HPC infrastructure more easily.

“Our goal is to further accelerate innovation into the Exascale era, aggressively waterfalling these solutions to scientists and businesses of all sizes to accelerate discovery and outcomes,” Kirk Skaugen, executive vice president of Lenovo and president of Lenovo Data Center Group, said in a statement.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said the collaboration between Lenovo and Intel was significant as very few players in the industry are capable of creating the next generation of HPC systems by themselves.

“Tight collaboration between processor and system makers is an essential requirement [for these systems],” Mueller said. “CIOs will be looking at this partnership closely in regards to its capabilities, performance and use cases, where today, AI has the biggest mindshare.”

The final piece of the puzzle will be the creation of joint HPC & AI centers of excellence at several locations around the world. The companies plan to make these accessible to universities and other researchers hoping to address some of humanity’s most pressing challenges, such as genomics and cancer research, weather and climate change, and space exploration.

Photo: lenovophotolibrary/flickr