Dell and NVIDIA Unveil Next-Generation AI Infrastructure at SC25

At SC25, Dell Technologies and NVIDIA unveiled enhancements to their combined AI platform, designed to help organizations run a broader spectrum of AI workloads—from legacy models to modern agent-based systems—with greater ease.

As businesses expand their AI initiatives, they frequently encounter common hurdles: managing a diverse and expanding hardware and software stack, maintaining data control, and ensuring systems are built for future growth. Recent studies indicate that a majority of organizations prefer collaborating with a trusted technology partner when implementing new solutions, and many recognize greater value when AI operates in closer proximity to their own data.

The Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA is founded on this principle. It integrates Dell's comprehensive infrastructure portfolio with NVIDIA's AI software suite, backed by Dell's professional services. This approach aims to help businesses transition from conceptual AI projects to tangible outcomes while minimizing technical overhead.

Faster deployment through integrated platforms

Dell is broadening its storage and AI portfolio to help companies automate deployment, enhance performance, and execute real-time AI workloads with improved reliability. The storage engines powering the Dell AI Data Platform—ObjectScale and PowerScale—now integrate with the NVIDIA NIXL library from NVIDIA Dynamo. This connection facilitates scalable KV Cache storage and sharing, achieving a one-second Time to First Token within a 131K-token context window, while also helping to lower costs and alleviate GPU memory constraints.

The Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA now also supports Dell PowerEdge XE7740 and XE7745 systems featuring NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs and NVIDIA Hopper GPUs. Dell states these systems provide organizations increased capacity for running larger multimodal models, agentic workloads, training operations, and enterprise-grade inference with robust performance.

According to Dell, the introduction of the Dell Automation Platform is intended to eliminate uncertainty by delivering pre-tuned and validated deployments via a secured setup. The platform strives to generate consistent, repeatable results and offer teams a more straightforward methodology for constructing AI workflows. Concurrently, software tools like the Tabnine AI code assistant and the Cohere North agentic AI platform are becoming increasingly automated, accelerating the movement of workloads into production and simplifying operational management at scale.

Beyond core data center infrastructure, Dell's AI PC ecosystem now supports devices with NVIDIA RTX Blackwell and NVIDIA RTX Ada GPUs, providing organizations with expanded hardware choices across Dell laptops and desktops. Dell Professional Services is additionally offering interactive pilot programs that utilize a customer's proprietary data to validate AI concepts prior to major investment. These pilots concentrate on defined metrics and outcomes, enabling teams to assess business value with greater confidence.

Next-generation infrastructure for stronger AI performance

Dell is modernizing its infrastructure offerings to better support sophisticated AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, with a focus on performance, scalability, and simplified management. The upcoming Dell PowerEdge XE8712, available next month, supports up to 144 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs in a standard rack format. This advancement makes rack-scale AI and HPC more attainable, supported by unified monitoring and automation through iDRAC, OpenManage Enterprise, and the Integrated Rack Controller.

Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies now provides support for NVIDIA Spectrum-X platforms alongside NVIDIA's Cumulus OS. This assists organizations in constructing open, standards-based AI networks capable of operating across multi-vendor environments. The latest SmartFabric Manager release also extends support to Dell's Enterprise SONiC on NVIDIA Spectrum-X platforms, aiming to cut deployment time and reduce configuration errors through guided automation.

More choice through an expanded AI ecosystem

Organizations are continually refining their AI budgets and strategies, with many seeking greater flexibility in their tool selection. Red Hat OpenShift for the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA is now validated on a wider range of Dell PowerEdge systems, offering teams more options for running AI workloads at scale.

This expanded support now encompasses both the Dell PowerEdge R760xa and the Dell PowerEdge XE9680 systems equipped with NVIDIA H100 and H200 Tensor Core GPUs. This combination merges Red Hat's control and governance frameworks with Dell's secure infrastructure, providing a clearer roadmap for companies needing to scale their AI operations.

Dell executives state these updates are designed to assist organizations in progressing from limited pilot projects to full-scale implementation. Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer at Dell Technologies, noted that the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA tackles a fundamental obstacle for many teams: "how to move from AI pilots to production without rebuilding their infrastructure." He added that Dell has "handled the integration work so customers don't have to," which he asserts will empower organizations to deploy and scale with increased assurance.

NVIDIA views this evolution as part of a larger shift in corporate AI adoption. Justin Boitano, Vice President of Enterprise AI Products, characterized the current period as one where enterprise AI is transitioning from experimentation to transformation, progressing at a pace that is "redefining how businesses operate." He stated that Dell and NVIDIA seek to enable this shift with a unified platform that converges infrastructure, automation, and data tools to help organizations "deploy AI at scale and realize measurable impact."

Industry analysts observe similar demand for integrated solutions. Ashish Nadkarni, Group Vice President and General Manager for Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies at IDC, commented that many teams desire AI-ready systems that are both powerful and easier to manage. He noted that the fusion of Dell's AI portfolio with NVIDIA's technology constitutes "a significant step forward in delivering enterprise-ready AI."

See also: 10% of Nvidia’s cost: Why Tesla-Intel chip partnership demands attention

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