NVIDIA's Blackwell Ultra AI Chip Enters Commercial Use, Boosting Cloud Services

NVIDIA's latest AI chip, the Blackwell Ultra, has officially entered commercial use. On Thursday, cloud computing company CoreWeave and Dell Technologies jointly announced the launch of the first cloud services deploying NVIDIA's GB300 NVL72 AI system, which is now available to customers. This marks a significant milestone in the global competition for AI computing power.

CoreWeave, founded in 2017, specializes in providing large-scale GPU services through the cloud. With the rapid increase in global demand for AI computing power, CoreWeave has become a key channel for startups and established institutions to access high-performance computing resources. The deployed system uses Dell's liquid-cooled servers, equipped with 72 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs and 36 Arm-based NVIDIA Grace CPUs. CoreWeave plans to continue expanding the deployment of Blackwell Ultra servers throughout the year to meet the growing AI computing needs of its customers.

Dell's Infrastructure Solutions Group President highlighted the significance of this deployment, stating that it represents a major step forward in enterprise AI development. Dell has consistently been committed to providing cutting-edge technology to various industries, helping customers quickly expand their innovative capabilities. The Blackwell Ultra is an upgraded version of the previous Blackwell, with a 50% performance improvement. NVIDIA's Chief Financial Officer had previously revealed that test samples of the Blackwell Ultra GB300 NVL72 had been sent to some customers, with mass production expected to begin this quarter.

The transition from the Hopper architecture to Blackwell was described as a "complex upgrade" due to the increase from 8 GPUs per rack to 72. However, the Blackwell Ultra maintains a similar architecture to Blackwell, also using a 72 GPU configuration, which will make the migration process smoother. As AI infrastructure continues to expand, Dell has become a leading manufacturer of AI computers and servers, with clients including CoreWeave and xAI, the latter of which is accelerating the construction of its own AI model training platform.