A new kind of technology demands a new kind of cloud.
Sure, it’s easy to take cloud computing for granted. After all, it’s been years since “the cloud” became part of our lives and everyday vernacular.
Over the years, clouds ranging from the simple (think Dropbox) to the fabulously complex (think multicloud ecosystems) have been powerful enough to handle whatever we’ve thrown their way.
But now our widespread adoption of AI demands a new kind of cloud.
To the rescue: Behold the neocloud!
Neoclouds offer AI workload-specific functionality as a service. And to help save enterprises and SMBs considerable expenses of time and money, neoclouds offer platforms designed to empower the rapid development and launch of the latest AI creations.
A neocloud isn’t your typical “run anything” platform. Instead, it’s optimized to run a narrow selection of highly specialized AI-centric tasks. These include AI/ML inference and training, data analytics and media rendering.
Neoclouds vs. Traditional Clouds
To better understand how neoclouds fit into the grand scheme of modern cloud architecture, it helps to compare and contrast them with their forebearer, the hyperscaler.
Hyperscalers that include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud also offer cloud-based services. They simply offer a much larger and less AI-specific selection.
The seemingly endless array of services these hyperscalers offer makes them ideal for developers who prize flexibility and versatility. Hyperscalers let developers combine multiple managed services to simultaneously harness the power of distributed databases, machine-learning pipelines and other components of a highly customized platform.
By contrast, neoclouds are tuned for specific workloads. They offer a narrower focus and so-called “opinionated architecture” designed to make autonomous architectural decisions. That level of specificity and autonomy changes the nature of the development process from DIY to plug & play.
More-Specific Hardware, Too
To fully compare neocloud apples with hyperscaler oranges, you also need to look under the hood. The tech behind the latest cloud type makes a huge difference.
For both hyperscalers and neoclouds, we’re talking about some of the most advanced tech ever. But here again, it’s the neocloud’s laser-like focus on AI that makes it an invaluable development tool.
It’s for that reason that popping the top off an AI server like the Supermicro’s 8U server (model AS -8126GS-TNMR) will treat you to a view of truly cutting-edge CPUs, GPUs and networking gear. That gear includes a couple of server-focused AMD EPYC 9005 series processors with as many as 384 cores and up to 6TB of DDR5 memory.
For brute-force AI processing, the Supermicro A+ server also offers room for eight onboard AMD Instinct MI350X GPUs banded together via AMD Infinity Fabric Link.
Supermicro’s behemoth is also equipped with AMD ROCm. Pronounced “rock-em,” it’s a software stack designed to translate the code written by programmers into sets of instructions that AMD GPUs can understand and execute perfectly.
The Neocloud Sales Pitch, Condensed
The what and how of neoclouds are important. But if your customers are considering investing in neocloud, they’ll surely want to know about the why, as well.
So why would you want to engage a neocloud for AI development? There are four main reasons:
1. Neoclouds cut admin work, letting you concentrate instead on production.
A new eBook from Supermicro and AMD, The Smartest Path to Scalable AI, cites neoclouds for their “frictionless dev-to-prod motion.”
That’s tech business-speak for a system that handles the nitty-gritty details, getting out of your way so you can get to work. That includes one-command access to optimized hardware and preconfigured environments.
Bottom line: Less admin, more development, and faster time-to-market.
2. A neocloud delivers instant gratification, not endless development integration.
“Day 0 readiness” is the catchphrase that sums up this one. And not just for any single aspect of the neocloud platform, but for the whole stack. That includes hardware, software, and the managed offerings wrapped around them, collectively referred to as services.
Bottom line: Large models and agents start running efficiently from the get-go.
3. A neocloud is always up-to-date with the latest, greatest silicon.
The last thing you want to contend with is outdated infrastructure. That may fly when it comes to making last-decade file storage app. But creating tomorrow’s brilliant new AI requires cutting-edge tech. The problem is, that tech gets expensive. The solution? Rent, don’t buy.
Bottom line: Access to all the cool toys, with no down payment.
4. It’s already got wheels; you don’t have to reinvent them.
Neoclouds come well stocked with what are known as specialized microservices. These are pre-built, workload-specific building blocks that developers can stand on to bypass the mundanities of production and get to the good stuff.
Examples of wheels you won’t have to reinvent include distributed training orchestration, streaming ingestion services, and GPU render farms.
Bottom line: Neoclouds do the boring due diligence, and let developers get all the glory.
The Future’s Future
Neoclouds are already the future. They’re coming online now, and revealing themselves to be the greatest thing for developers since sliced bread.
But tech moves fast these days. There’s always someone thinking about the next step.
When it comes to the next step for neoclouds, that’s likely to involve deeper specialization, more compelling economics, and consolidation.
That makes sense in terms of the big picture. As both enterprises and SMBs adopt neoclouds, they’ll create more demand. That demand, in turn, should help fund expansion.
Eventually, we may see a new level of specificity. For example, one neocloud could offer low-latency SaaS production inferencing, while another may focus on analytics that cater to medical research.
What happens after that is hard to predict. But one easy-to-believe theory foretells a time in which neoclouds plug into hyperscalers. With that kind of power, imagine what tomorrow’s developers will be able to do!
Do More:
- Read the Supermicro/AMD eBook about neoclouds: The Smartest Path to Scalable AI
- Check the tech specs for Supermicro’s 8U server with AMD Instinct GPUs
- Learn what’s new in AMD ROCm 7