Companies will have to invest in advanced security technologies that will also allow their customers to encrypt their data in the cloud while it’s being processed, and unlock their high performance computing needs. AMD’s second-generation EPYC processors have been providing the right balance of compute, memory, I/O and security to address changing enterprise needs in virtualized environments. In an interaction with Manoj Jha, Editor, Smart State India with Mr. Vinay Sinha, Managing Director, Sales, AMD India about the datacenter innovations and AMD’s public cloud services.
How are enterprises strengthening their ecosystems and re-imagining the datacenters for the future?
As remote working and hyper-connectivity aim to expand opportunities for enterprise networks and move data processing to the edge, IT leaders are reimagining their data centers to remain relevant. They are looking at scaling their IT infrastructure and modernizing it for smarter and better outcomes. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), moving to the cloud for better performance, better optimization capabilities and lower cost are some of the measure’s enterprises are adopting to digitize faster and innovate with increased efficiency.
With rapidly growing volumes of data, apps and technologies, the focus on HPC and datacenters are on an all-time high. IT solution enablers will require intelligent yet simplified datacenter management solutions that are flexible, powerful, efficient, and secure, as the world prepares itself for more digital disruptions. At the onset of this change, hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) are being deployed by enterprises. It takes in all the elements of a traditional “hardware-defined” IT infrastructure and evolves it into a “software-defined” virtualized environment that is simple to manage and operate. HCI provides the scalability and simplicity of the cloud, with the performance of on-premise infrastructure.
How are AMD’s datacenters enabling HPC capabilities for their customers in India?
Changing business dynamics and challenging workloads at the backdrop of rapid digital transformation requires constant innovation in high performance computing (HPC). These changes are pressing IT decision makers to seek more with less – more performance and scalability with reduced power and leads to better TCO.
HPC is at the core of everything we do at AMD. With AMD 2nd Generation EPYC processor, based on industry leading Zen2 core architecture and 7 nanometer process technology, we are enabling choice and innovation in the datacenter ecosystem across high performance computing, enterprises, and the cloud. We are helping data center customers enable hybrid, multi-cloud approaches for their IT environment, which allows them to be more agile in a virtualized environment.
The drive to hybrid-cloud computing has propelled a paradigm shift from physical to virtual infrastructure. AMD EPYC processors are engineered to address the modern datacenter challenges through big data, virtualized environments and HPC workloads.
Today, the rise of remote working has stirred the demand for HPC among enterprises. How is AMD meeting these computing demands with the company’s datacenter solutions?
IT leaders are reassessing their datacenter strategies to simplify, scale and optimize their IT infrastructure for better outcomes in this current state of geographically dispersed workforce. Keeping the constant innovations with digital transformation, organizations need more compute power, better Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and are adopting the cloud for better performance, optimization capabilities at reduced cost, resulting in maximizing the returns on data center investment.
At AMD, we understand the need for a well-organized software-defined infrastructure. Whether organizations build software defined storage appliances, virtualized environments, or hyper converged systems, AMD EPYC processors offer the CPU and I/O performance, flexibility and security features that enterprises can take advantage of. In addition to this, the EPYC™ processors have delivered record-setting performance across enterprise, virtualization, cloud and high-performance workloads.
Can you tell us a little about Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDIs)? What is their role in enhancing server capabilities?
Desktop virtualization is an increasingly important technology asset across organizations today. Desktop virtualization allows companies to provide a simple, cost-effective and secure way for employees to access applications and resources needed to perform their job function from any device, and any location. A virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) means that a user’s desktop environment is stored remotely on a server, rather than on a local PC or other client computing devices. It separates the desktop operating systems, applications, and data from the hardware client, storing this “virtual desktop” on a remote server. VDI provides a better user experience and is tied directly to server capability.
Over the years, VDI has evolved to a great extent and has achieved unprecedented levels of mobility, capability, versatility, and security. AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Radeon Instinct GPUs power a VDI offering from Microsoft Azure called NVv4. This VDI offering allows customers to choose the amount of GPU power they need for their workloads, from 1/8th of a GPU, all the way to a full GPU for heavy rendering and design work.
Providing a dynamic workplace environment via VDIs should be an IT strategy across organizations. It is the apt time for enterprises to evaluate the role of VDIs in order to set up a successful virtual work environment.
Who are some of AMD’s public cloud service customers in India and globally? Why is AMD their preferred choice for HPC?
We have over 120 cloud instances and OEM platforms using AMD EPYC processors. Our ecosystem of OEMs and cloud service providers continue to grow globally and in India. We are expanding cloud deployments with the top 10 cloud service providers and there are expected to be more than 150 instances powered by AMD EPYC processors in 2020. Currently, Google, Amazon AWS, Google, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, OVHcloud, Tencent Twitter and Twitter Tencent have all announced plans to deploy AMD 2nd Gen EPYC processors. We are also expanding its presence in the enterprise, with large-scale deployments from leading server OEMs and a growing pipeline.
Cloud service providers and enterprises globally are deploying our processors to access features including PCIe 4, class-leading memory bandwidth and AMD Infinity Guard security features. Our EPYC™ processors are engineered to address the modern datacenter challenges through big data, virtualized environments, software defined infrastructures, data analytics and HPC workloads. With a goal to set up a comprehensively agile and reliable data center ecosystem, we empower dynamic businesses to make smarter decisions, and the EPYC™ Processors help make that happen.
What are AMD’s datacenter innovations we can anticipate this year in India?
India is an important region to expand the reach and awareness of AMD EPYC Processors. As this country of 1 billion becomes more digitized, organizations need robust, secure data centers to store trillions and trillions of bites of data being generated each day. We will continue to empower businesses across industries to leverage the benefits and value-added features of our processors. We believe our TCO potential with 2nd Gen AMD EPYC is extremely compelling, especially when combined with performance leadership in areas that matter. We are committed to continuing our journey of innovative leadership. A journey focused on bringing the leadership performance and total cost of ownership across key application areas in the data center.
