RALEIGH, N.C., Oct. 23, 2018 — Red Hat, Inc., a leading provider of open source solutions, today announced it is collaborating with NVIDIA to bring a new wave of open innovation around emerging workloads like artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning and data science to enterprise datacenters around the world. Driving this effort is the certification of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, on NVIDIA DGX-1 systems. This certification provides a foundation for the rest of the Red Hat portfolio, including Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, to be deployed and jointly supported on NVIDIA’s AI supercomputers.

AI is often looked at as an enabling technology for enterprises seeking to gain a competitive edge and market differentiation through digital transformation. Research firm Ovum¹ highlights the growing interest in AI, stating that, “The proportion of enterprises with active interest in AI initiatives (i.e., planning, trialing, or deploying) shifted from 62% last year to 77% this year [2018].”

As NVIDIA DGX-1 systems enter the datacenter to provide powerful AI platforms, IT teams will often want to manage and maintain these systems within their existing operations, which frequently are Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based. The ability to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on NVIDIA DGX-1 hardware provides not only a familiar control plane and SELinux-secured user environment for IT teams to weave into their existing workflows, but can also serve as a catalyst to drive further innovation with AI and deep learning.

Enterprises across many industries, including those in the public sector, oil and gas, financial services and more, will now be able to more effectively integrate NVIDIA architecture into existing infrastructure environments with Red Hat Enterprise Linux acting as the common “bridge.” In support of greater flexibility across enterprise environments, current Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers will be able to use existing subscriptions on NVIDIA DGX-1 systems, backed by both Red Hat and NVIDIA. Additionally, organizations using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on NVIDIA DGX-1 systems will also have a foundation for the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes offering in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, extending cloud-native support to emerging workloads.

ISVs can move existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux-certified applications to NVIDIA’s new class of systems with little-to-no changes, gaining easier access to advanced AI and deep learning capabilities to support more intelligent workloads.

In the realm of high-performance computing, Red Hat and NVIDIA deliver technologies and expertise to fuel two of the world’s fastest supercomputers, Summit and Sierra. As part of a broader group of industry leaders, Red Hat helped bring both of these systems online providing a model not only for next-generation high-performance computing (HPC) in performance-sensitive environments but also for the enterprise datacenter of the future.

Beyond Red Hat Enterprise Linux certified and supported on NVIDIA DGX systems, the companies intend to collaborate on broader open source initiatives, including:

• NVIDIA GPU Cloud (NGC) containers on Red Hat OpenShift – Red Hat and NVIDIA plan to deliver NGC containers that provide users with GPU-optimized software tools for AI and HPC based on Red Hat technologies, enabling mutual customers to take full advantage of NVIDIA GPUs.
• Heterogeneous memory management (HMM) – Red Hat and NVIDIA plan to continue upstream development of the heterogeneous memory management (HMM) feature. This kernel feature allows devices to access and mirror the content of a system’s memory into their own, enabling significant performance improvements for applications using GPUs.

Red Hat at GTC DC

To learn more about how Red Hat and NVIDIA align on open source solutions to fuel emerging workloads, visit Red Hat (booth #44) at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in Washington, D.C., from October 23-24, 2018. At the event, Red Hat and NVIDIA will also jointly present a “Best practices for deploying Red Hat platforms on DGX systems in datacenters” on Tuesday, October 23, 3:30PM – 4:20PM.

1Digital transformation has progressed strongly in 2018, with AI a key enabling technology

About Red Hat

Red Hat is a leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Red Hat helps customers integrate new and existing IT applications, develop cloud-native applications, standardize on our industry-leading operating system, and automate, secure, and manage complex environments. Award-winning support, training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500. As a strategic partner to cloud providers, system integrators, application vendors, customers, and open source communities, Red Hat can help organizations prepare for the digital future.

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Source: Red Hat