HPE backs AMD's Helios AI rack with Juniper's scale-up switch

HPE is throwing its weight behind AMD's Helios rack-scale architecture and will offer this as part of its AI portfolio next year, including a purpose-built Juniper Networks scale-up switch.

Announced ahead of HPE's Discover event in Barcelona this week, the company claims it will be one of the first companies to offer a turnkey rack system for large-scale AI training and inference, based on AMD's reference design.

Helios is intended to operate a rack full of nodes fitted with accelerators as if they were one single large GPU, like Nvidia's DGX GB200 NVL72 system, to which Helios is pitched as a rival.

As far as AMD is concerned, Helios will be a vehicle for its next-generation Instinct MI455X GPUs and its 6th-gen Epyc CPUs, codenamed Venice, both of which are due next year, so HPE can only say that it will offer its Helios AI Rack ...