Dell Technologies' 'PowerEdge Server' will be supplied to the Gwangju National AI Data Center with high-performance GPUs and stable infrastructure, contributing to enhancing Korea's artificial intelligence competitiveness.

Dell announced on the 31st that it will supply Dell PowerEdge servers to NHN Cloud's 'Gwangju National AI Data Center', which will open in October.

NHN Cloud plans to strengthen its AI initiatives and accelerate its public cloud transformation business by leveraging Dell’s infrastructure solutions.

NHN Cloud, which was spun off from NHN in April of last year and launched as an independent corporation, has grown rapidly, focusing on the public cloud market, and has succeeded in attracting investment this year, becoming a 'unicorn' company with a corporate value of 1 trillion won.

NHN Cloud supports efficient cloud transition by meeting different security and server policies through a cloud system optimized for the domestic corporate environment based on high stability and scalability.
The 'Gwangju National AI Data Center', part of the 'Artificial Intelligence Industry Convergence Complex Development Project' promoted by Gwangju, opened in October of this year in the Advanced 3rd District of Buk-gu, Gwangju Metropolitan City. It is planned. It is composed of an open architecture to enable smooth data sharing during AI research and development, and provides large-scale computing resources of 88.5 petaflops (PF) of computing power and 107 petabytes (PB) of storage capacity in a cloud format. It is expected to respond to the demand for ultra-high-spec computing resources for AI development by companies, research institutes, and universities, and contribute to the activation of the AI industry ecosystem and the cultivation of industry talent.

Dell will supply the 'Dell PowerEdge XE9680' server, which is optimized for AI acceleration and powerful HPC (high-performance computing) modeling, to NHN Cloud's latest project. The PowerEdge XE9680 is Dell's first high-performance GPU model, and it utilizes eight NVIDIA H100 Tensor Cores to provide optimal performance with an air-cooled design.

The XE9680 server, which can be equipped with up to 56 4th generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, supports connection between GPUs with NVIDIA's NVlink technology and dramatically improves energy consumption and power burden by suppressing heat generation with Dell's unique 'smart cooling technology'.

NHN Cloud chose Dell’s infrastructure solution because the PowerEdge XE9680 server supports H100 GPUs that are 4.5 times faster than the previous generation, and ensures efficient management and visibility to reduce TCO (total cost of ownership) and reduce environmental impact, thereby lowering operating costs. In addition, Dell’s outstanding reliability and expertise through various references that have already been verified in terms of maintenance were also effective.

Through this collaboration with Dell, NHN Cloud will become the first domestic CSP (cloud service provider) to build an AI and HPC environment based on NVIDIA H100. NHN Cloud plans to expand its AI/HPC environment based on the Dell PowerEdge infrastructure equipped with H100 in the future. This Gwangju National AI Data Center is a network-neutral data center that can be used by freely selecting a telecommunications line operator, and provides the same network quality reliability and accessibility as the metropolitan area. The PUE target of this data center, which maximizes energy efficiency, is 1.33, which is about 20% lower than the domestic private data average.

NHN Cloud CEO Dong-Hoon Kim said, “As the cloud is a core infrastructure for utilizing AI, we expect it to drive diverse demands from both the public and private sectors. In particular, we expect this collaboration case to be an opportunity to solidify our unrivaled position as a top-tier cloud service company by combining NHN Cloud’s rich service experience optimized for the domestic environment with Dell’s reliable infrastructure solutions.”

Kim Kyung-jin, President and CEO of Dell Technologies Korea, said, “Dell Technologies is contributing to accelerating the adoption of AI in the data age, and we are pleased to be able to partner with industry-leading NHN Cloud to build advanced cloud and AI services.” He added, “Dell Technologies will continue to make efforts to help domestic public institutions and companies achieve digital innovation.”