What do you get if you mix Nvidia Corp.’s artificial intelligence smarts with VMware Inc.’s virtualization and cloud expertise? Attendees at VMworld 2020 virtual found out when the partners announced the release of a jointly engineered solution that promises “to bring AI to every enterprise.”

“This is a great moment in time where AI has finally come to life, because the hardware and software has come together to make it possible,” said Manuvir Das (pictured, right), head of enterprise computing at Nvidia Corp.

Das and Krish Prasad (pictured, left), senior vice president and general manager of the Cloud Platform Business Unit at VMware Inc., joined John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during VMworld. They discussed the partnership between Nvidia and VMware, as well as the “democratization of AI.” (* Disclosure below.)

Collaboration and ‘deep computer science’ leads to faster cancer detection

Nvidia is more usually associated with graphics processing units than AI, but the company recently closed a deal to buy Arm Holdings Inc. in a move it described as “creating the world’s premier computing company for the age of AI.”

VMware has been on a transformation journey of its own, morphing from offering a platform for running virtual machines into a hybrid cloud management platform that can run either Kubernetes or VM workloads on-premises or in the cloud, or clouds. This “vastly simplifies the operational complexity that our customers have to deal with,” Prasad said. The next chapter in VMware’s journey is “doing the same thing for AI workloads” he added.

“There is some real deep computer science here between the engineers at VMware and Nvidia,” said Das, describing how the technology works. He suggested imagining the process as a three-layer stack: The foundation is the hardware to run the algorithms, which Nvidia has with its GPUs. On top is the AI-enabled software stack with “all the right algorithmics that take advantage of that hardware,” Das stated. “This is actually where Nvidia spends most of its effort today.”

Providing the middle layer that marries the software and hardware is the VMware platform. Wire these three components together with the right algorithms and “you get real acceleration,” according to Das.

Early use-case examples come from the healthcare field, where cancer detection has been increased exponentially through the application of AI. “The workload is running 30 times faster than it was running before this integration,” Das stated.

Prasad concluded: “We think that this is going to vastly accelerate the adoption of AI and essentially democratize AI in the enterprise.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld. (* Disclosure: VMware Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither VMware nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE