InstaDeep™ Powers AI as a Service With Shared NVMe

Sponsored by Businesswire

Excelero,
a disruptor in software-defined block storage, today announced that
global Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovator, InstaDeep,
has deployed Excelero’s NVMesh® software on Boston
Ltd. Flash-IO Talyn storage systems to create a highly efficient
data center infrastructure using a scalable pool of high-performance
NVMe flash that ensures full utilization of GPU processing power and
maximum ROI.

InstaDeep offers a pioneering AI as a Service solution enabling
organizations of any size to leverage the benefits of AI and Machine
Learning (ML) without the time, costs and expertise required to run
their own AI stacks. Excelero’s NVMesh®, in turn, allows InstaDeep to
access the low-latency, high-bandwidth performance that is essential for
running customer AI and ML workloads efficiently – and gain the
scalability vital to InstaDeep’s own rapid growth.

“Finding a storage infrastructure that would scale modularly and was
highly efficient for AI and ML workflows is no small challenge,”
explained Amine Kerkeni, Head of AI Product at InstaDeep. “Our clients
simply will not achieve the performance they need if an infrastructure
starves the GPUs with slow storage or wastes time copying data to and
from systems. Excelero NVMesh ticked all the boxes for us and more.”

By allowing the GPU optimized servers to access remote scalable,
high-performance NVMe flash storage drives as if they were local flash –
with full IOPs and bandwidth capabilities, the InstaDeep team is
achieving highly efficient usage of the GPUs themselves and the
associated NVMe flash. The end-result is higher ROI, easier workflow
management and faster time to results.

InstaDeep’s first Excelero system includes a 2U Boston Flash-IO Talyn
server with Micron NVMe flash and Excelero NVMesh software that provides
access to up to 100TB external high-performance storage. Leveraging the
Mellanox 100GB Infiniband network cards in the DGX, the GPUs use the
NVMe storage with local performance. The ability to choose any file
system to run on NVMesh was an immense benefit. Early tests immediately
indicated that external NVMe storage with Excelero gives equal or better
performance than local cache in the NVIDIA DGX.

“The GPU systems powering the AI and ML explosion have an amazing
appetite for data, but many organizations are finding they quickly
create a storage bottleneck,” explained Yaniv Romem, Excelero’s CTO.
“The only storage that is fast enough to keep up with these GPUs is
local NVMe flash, due to the high competition for valuable PCIe
connectivity amongst GPUs, networking and storage. Excelero’s NVMesh
eliminates the need to compromise between performance and storage
functionality by unifying remote NVMe devices into a logical block pool
that performs the same as local NVMe flash with the ability to easily
share data and protect it.”

“We’re excited to provide essential capabilities to help propel
InstaDeep’s growth as the company elevates its game to meet AI demands,”
Romem said.

About Excelero

Excelero delivers low-latency distributed block storage for web-scale
applications such as AI, machine learning and GPU computing. Founded in
2014 by a team of storage veterans and inspired by the Tech Giants’
shared-nothing architectures for web-scale applications, the company has
designed a software-defined block storage solution that meets the
low-latency performance and scalability requirements of the largest
web-scale and enterprise applications.

Excelero’s NVMesh enables shared NVMe across any network and supports
any local or distributed file system. Customers benefit from the
performance of local flash with the convenience of centralized storage
while avoiding proprietary hardware lock-in and reducing the overall
storage TCO. NVMesh is deployed by major web-scale customers, for data
analytics and machine learning applications and in Media & Entertainment
post-production and HPC environments.

About InstaDeep

Founded in Tunis in 2015 by Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim, InstaDeep is
today an industry renowned AI firm delivering AI products and solutions
for the enterprise, with headquarters in London, and offices in Paris,
Tunis, Nairobi and Lagos.

Powered by high-performance computing and outstanding research and
development breakthroughs, InstaDeep utilises deep reinforcement
learning to create AI systems that can optimise decision-making
processes in real-life industrial environments. Our skilled in-house
team of AI researchers, Machine Learning engineers, Hardware and
Visualization experts, harness the expertise to build end-to-end
products that can tackle the most challenging optimisation and
automation challenges, and provide real value and ROI to your business.
InstaDeep offers a host of AI solutions, ranging from optimised
pattern-recognition, GPU-accelerated insights, to self-learning decision
making systems.

InstaDeep partners with organisations such as Deep Learning Indaba,
Google Launchpad Accelerator, Facebook Dev Circles and Data Science
Nigeria to support the rise of AI in Africa and across the globe.

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