AI Infrastructure plays a key role in the speed and cost-competitiveness of developing and deploying advanced AI models. The current demand for powerful AI infrastructure for model training is driven by the emergence of generative AI and foundational models, where on occasion thousands of GPUs must cooperate on a single training job for the model to be trained in a reasonable time. Delivering efficient and high-performing AI training requires an end-to-end solution that combines hardware, software and holistic telemetry to cater for multiple types of AI workloads. In this report, we describe IBM's hybrid cloud infrastructure that powers our generative AI model development. This infrastructure includes (1) Vela: an AI-optimized supercomputing capability directly integrated into the IBM Cloud, delivering scalable, dynamic, multi-tenant and geographically distributed infrastructure for large-scale model training and other AI workflow steps and (2) Blue Vela: a large-scale, purpose-built, on-premises hosting environment that is optimized to support our largest and most ambitious AI model training tasks. Vela provides IBM with the dual benefit of high performance for internal use along with the flexibility to adapt to an evolving commercial landscape. Blue Vela provides us with the benefits of rapid development of our largest and most ambitious models, as well as future-proofing against the evolving model landscape in the industry. Taken together, they provide IBM with the ability to rapidly innovate in the development of both AI models and commercial offerings.

翻译：AI基础设施在开发和部署先进AI模型的速度与成本竞争力方面发挥着关键作用。当前对强大AI训练基础设施的需求由生成式AI和基础模型的兴起所驱动，这些模型偶尔需要数千个GPU协同完成单个训练任务，才能在合理时间内完成模型训练。提供高效且高性能的AI训练需要端到端的解决方案，该方案需整合硬件、软件和整体遥测技术，以适应多种类型的AI工作负载。本报告描述了支撑IBM生成式AI模型开发的混合云基础设施。该基础设施包括：(1) Vela：直接集成到IBM Cloud中的AI优化超级计算能力，为大规模模型训练及其他AI工作流程步骤提供可扩展、动态、多租户且地理分布的基础设施；(2) Blue Vela：一个大规模、专用构建的本地托管环境，专门为支持我们最大规模和最具雄心的AI模型训练任务而优化。Vela为IBM提供了双重优势：内部使用的高性能以及适应不断演变的商业环境的灵活性。Blue Vela使我们能够快速开发最大规模和最具雄心的模型，并具备应对行业模型格局演变的未来适应性。两者相结合，为IBM在AI模型开发和商业产品创新方面提供了快速创新能力。