HPE buys Determined AI to speed AI model training with HPC

Dekate said Determined AI stood out among 70 or 80 startups in the AI market with its well-known engineering team and focus on enabling enterprises to employ a hybrid, multi-cloud environment to accelerate deep learning model training, validation and deployment. He cited Determined AI software capabilities such as cluster sharing and resource management; automated hyperparameter search and optimization to help developers identify the right models faster and more efficiently; distributed training to use diverse resources; and experiment logging and tracking through a central dashboard.

“As with any acquisition, we will be watching it very closely to see how successfully they integrate the product and how they expose the unified capabilities to end users,” Dekate said. “But, frankly speaking, Determined AI is quite complementary to HPE Ezmeral ML Ops and, I think, you will see them work quite well with one another.”

Kashyap Kompella, CEO and chief analyst at RPA2AI Research, said Determined AI is a “good tuck-in acquisition” for HPE that fits well with its HPC and cloud strategies. He said HPE is a leader in the HPC segment, where customers tend to prefer private clouds and HPE has a good presence with its GreenLake as-a-service offerings.

“While much of academic research on AI is focused on improving AI methods and models, the Determined AI team is known for their interesting research on the practical aspects of AI, such as optimizing and deploying deep-learning models into production,” Kompella said.

He added, as the AI models used in real-world applications get bigger, they require huge computing infrastructure. Costs can run to millions of dollars as the engineering aspects of training and deploying AI models grow more complex, according to Kompella.

“With Determined AI technology,” he said, “HPE must be looking to cut down those bills for their customers.”

Carol Sliwa is a TechTarget senior writer covering storage arrays and drives, flash and memory technologies, and enterprise architecture.