WWT AI Proving Ground Gets a Boost with the Cisco UCS X-Series

WWT is excited to announce that our AI Proving Ground will integrate the Cisco UCS X-Series, featuring the revolutionary UCS X9508 chassis and innovative X-Fabric technology, to enhance AI, ML and other data-intensive workloads. This modular system supports up to 24 NVIDIA GPUs per chassis, offering advanced flexibility, scalability and performance to help future-proof data centers. Discover its transformative potential today.

As WWT continues to expand the capabilities of its AI Proving Ground, we are able to integrate Cisco's cutting-edge UCS X-Series infrastructure into this environment, enhancing our AI-focused solutions with advanced flexibility and power. The Cisco UCS X-Series, anchored by the UCS X9508 chassis and powered by X-Fabric technology, is designed to tackle the most demanding workloads by combining the efficiency of blade servers with the expandability of rack servers, providing a future-proof architecture capable of scaling with your organization's needs.

Furthermore, by integrating the UCS X440p PCIe node, the UCS X-Series can scale upwards to up to 24 GPUs per chassis, helping our customers deploy advanced AI solutions with ease. This article explores how this new infrastructure strengthens the WWT AI Proving Ground while providing WWT customers with a robust, high-performance setting to efficiently test, validate, and drive innovation using advanced technologies.

Why This Matters

With the addition of the Cisco UCS X-Series modular system, this innovative lab environment now offers even greater capabilities for organizations to test and validate AI solutions before making significant investments. This reduces risk and speeds up the path to successfully adopting AI.

This aligns with WWT's commitment to continually evolve and improve the AI Proving Ground, a unique facility that grants access to a wide range of cutting-edge AI hardware and software from the industry's top vendors. It essentially provides a "sandbox" for companies to experiment with various AI technologies, compare performance, and develop and validate AI use cases relevant to their needs.

The Cisco UCS X-Series is a platform specifically designed to handle the intense workloads of modern data centers, including the demands of AI and machine learning. Its adaptable architecture allows for easy customization and expansion, enabling businesses to adjust their infrastructure as their AI projects evolve and grow.

This translates to several serious advantages for the AI Proving Ground. First, the UCS X-Series brings powerful performance for AI workloads, leading to faster training and inference times. Second, its modular design allows the AI Proving Ground to quickly adapt to new AI technologies and testing scenarios, helping ensure it remains at the forefront of the AI landscape. Third, the UCS X-Series offers remarkable scalability, meaning it can handle the increasing complexity of AI projects and accommodate future growth. Finally, it's designed with energy efficiency in mind, contributing to lower operational costs.

Ultimately, the integration of the Cisco UCS X-Series into the WWT AI Proving Ground creates an even more comprehensive and robust environment for evaluating AI solutions. Businesses can take advantage of this platform to thoroughly validate their AI investments, accelerate their AI adoption, develop crucial AI expertise, and drive innovation by exploring new and exciting AI use cases. This upgrade reinforces WWT's commitment to empowering organizations on their journey to unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence.

Under the Hood of the Cisco UCS X-Series and X-Fabric Technology

The Cisco UCS X9508 chassis is the backbone of the UCS X-Series Modular System. Engineered with a midplane-free design, this 7-rack-unit (7RU) chassis supports up to eight slots that can house a combination of compute and PCIe nodes, providing a high level of flexibility and scalability. Key features of the chassis include:

• Compute node flexibility: Supports single-slot and dual-slot compute nodes, such as the X210c and X410c, capable of handling both traditional and emerging workloads.
• I/O and GPU expansion: Up to four PCIe nodes per chassis, allowing for significant GPU acceleration.
• High-speed connectivity: Equipped with the Intelligent Fabric Modules (IFMs) and X-Fabric modules, the chassis supports up to 100 Gbps of unified fabric connectivity per compute node.

At the heart of the UCS X-Series' modular design is the X-Fabric technology, which provides a high-speed PCIe fabric to connect compute nodes with I/O and GPU resources without the need for a traditional network fabric. This reduces latency and power consumption while enhancing performance.

The Cisco UCS X440p PCIe node, specifically designed to fit into the X9508 chassis, brings powerful GPU acceleration capabilities to the data center. This PCIe node supports multiple GPUs, including NVIDIA Ampere and Hopper architecture GPUs, to meet the needs of high-performance computing, AI/ML workloads, and data-intensive applications. Some key capabilities include:

• Support for up to 24 GPUs per chassis: With each UCS X440p node supporting up to four GPUs, and up to four PCIe nodes fitting into a single X9508 chassis, a maximum of 24 GPUs can be deployed per chassis (additional GPUs can also be added via front mezzanine connections on the compute nodes).
• Seamless compute-PCIe integration: The UCS X9416 X-Fabric module acts as a bridge between the compute nodes and PCIe nodes, enabling fast and efficient data transfer.

Call to Action

The Cisco UCS X-Fabric Technology, when combined with the UCS X9508 chassis and X440p PCIe node, offers a powerful solution for modern data centers. Whether your focus is AI, big data analytics or general compute workloads, this modular system provides unmatched flexibility, scalability, and performance. The combination of high-speed PCIe fabric, GPU acceleration and cloud-managed infrastructure enables organizations to future-proof their data centers while optimizing for current application demands.

With Cisco UCS X-Fabric Technology, your data center is not just ready for today's challenges but is prepared to adapt to the needs of tomorrow. Contact your WWT sales team and book a tour of our AI Proving Ground today.