Nvidia/Cisco

APRIL 2022

Technology has always driven innovation in business. But now, tech is rapidly redefining the entire idea of what — and, more importantly, where — the workplace is. Whether it’s to expand reach into a global talent pool, save money on office-space overhead, or merely add convenience for their employees, companies have been gravitating more and more toward an adaptable remote working environment — a trend that has only accelerated over the past two years. While this shift has provided much needed flexibility in some areas of business, it has also created some speedbumps when it comes to the efficiency, effectiveness, consistency, and security of a company’s information systems.

The goal is to simplify and support customers’ transitions to hybrid and cloud-native environments and deliver workstation-caliber performance, experience, and security to employees working from any device, anywhere, at any time. “Because Cisco is laser-focused on simplifying our customers’ hybrid cloud and cloud-native transformations and supporting our customers who choose to deploy NVIDIA accelerated computing, Cisco is now providing NVIDIA-Certified servers,” says Jeremy Sawyer, Cisco Senior Director of Cloud Technology and Software. “As many of our UCS customers turn to NVIDIA, they can rest assured that Cisco is supporting them.”

Cisco and NVIDIA are building game changing solutions in accelerated compute, security, and collaboration. Delivering game changing joint value for our customers in hybrid cloud workloads with enterprise grade innovations like X-Fabric architecture and NVAIE!"

With Cisco and NVIDIA, employees can work safely and efficiently from anywhere

Through its unique Good Neighbor Initiative, the Fordham School of Professional and Continuing Students (PCS) is offering adult learners in nearby neighborhoods an automatic 30% reduction in undergraduate tuition fees.”

NVIDIA made its name by essentially inventing the GPU, the specialized processor that accelerated the rendering of computer graphics and reinvented parallel computing. Now, the company’s latest GPUs — like the A100 Tensor Core GPU, which debuts the world’s fastest memory bandwidth at over 2 terabytes per second — can help streamline collaboration among co-workers and team members connecting from devices all over the globe. With this tech, employees working remotely will be able to:

Vignesh Rama Partner Executive, Cisco - NVIDIA

To meet these challenges, IT departments are ramping up their adoption of cloud-native technologies and migrating to hybrid cloud environments that leverage both in and out of the office. Specifically, they’re turning to Kubernetes container-based applications and services — including AI training, inferencing, data analytics, and high-performance computing (HPC) — and they’re driving these workloads with high-performance hardware and software from AI-computing leader, NVIDIA. That’s why Cisco, the business communications icon, has joined with NVIDIA to offer NVIDIA-Certified servers compatible with the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite. And to solidify this partnership Cisco has recently certified its first UCS server, the Cisco UCS C240 M6 Rack Server, which is powered by NVIDIA’s breakthrough A100 Tensor Core GPU. It’s just the beginning of what promises to be a long and fruitful collaboration to ensure that Cisco customers running NVIDIA tech are supported for optimal performance.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

• Skip slow file loading and access data faster • Edit and collaborate in real time • Shorten design and evaluation cycles • Reduce costs by accelerating time to decision • Innovate more rapidly and respond faster to the market

In addition, virtual GPUs can also be shared across multiple virtual machines, accessed by any device from any location. Desktop solutions powered by Cisco UCS or HyperFlex, NVIDIA GPUs, and NVIDIA Virtual GPU (vGPU) technology accelerate productivity and power graphics-intensive 3D applications. And NVIDIA vGPU software can run on the same GPUs as deep learning, inferencing, training, and HPC workloads, making it possible to facilitate mixed workloads and allow IT to upgrade software without any downtime or data loss. In order to be NVIDIA-Certified, a system must perform to NVIDIA’s standard of best configurations for performance, manageability, scalability, and security. It must also meet the company’s high expectations for best practices when it comes to design. “As many of our UCS customers turn to NVIDIA accelerated computing and the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite, they can rest assured that Cisco is supporting them with NVIDIA-Certified Systems,” says Sawyer. And this is only the beginning. If you want to know more about the partnership between Cisco and NVIDIA — or are just interested in the future of workspace in the age of AI — check out the recent GTC 2022 (now on-demand). This virtual event occurred March 21-24 and connected industry leaders from around the globe to discuss business strategy, technical strategy, and education sessions designed to accelerate tech careers. Cisco led discussions centered on GPU acceleration, security analytics, and end-user experience through virtual desktop infrastructure. Experience GTC 2022 on-demand here.