Be a part of our day by day and weekly newsletters for the newest updates and unique content material on industry-leading AI protection. Be taught Extra
As synthetic intelligence drives unprecedented demand for information processing, Mountain View startup Voltron Knowledge is providing an answer to one among AI’s least mentioned however most important challenges: transferring and reworking large datasets rapidly sufficient to maintain up.
Voltron Knowledge, which introduced a strategic partnership with Accenture at present, has developed a GPU-accelerated analytics engine that would assist enterprises overcome the information preparation bottleneck hampering AI initiatives. The corporate’s core product, Theseus, permits organizations to course of petabyte-scale information utilizing graphics processing items (GPUs) as an alternative of conventional pc processors (CPUs).
“Everybody’s targeted on the flashy new stuff which you could contact and really feel, but it surely’s that dataset basis beneath that’s going to be key,” mentioned Michael Abbott, who leads Accenture’s banking and capital markets follow, in an unique interview with VentureBeat. “To make AI work, you’ve bought to maneuver information round at a velocity and tempo you simply by no means needed to earlier than.”
Constructing for the AI tsunami: Why conventional information processing gained’t minimize it
The partnership comes as firms dashing to undertake generative AI are discovering their current information infrastructure isn’t outfitted to deal with the quantity and velocity of information required. This problem is predicted to accentuate as AI brokers turn out to be extra prevalent in enterprise operations.
“Brokers will in all probability write extra SQL queries than people did in a really quick time horizon,” mentioned Rodrigo Aramburu, Voltron Knowledge’s Subject CTO and cofounder. “If CIOs and CTOs are already saying they spend manner an excessive amount of on information analytics and cloud infrastructure, and the demand is about to step operate larger, then we want a step operate down in the price of operating these queries.”
Not like conventional database distributors which have retrofitted GPU assist onto current methods, Voltron Knowledge constructed its engine from the bottom up for GPU acceleration. “What most firms have completed after they’ve tried to do GPU acceleration is that they’ll shoehorn GPUs onto an current system,” Aramburu informed VentureBeat. “By constructing from the bottom up…we’re capable of get 10x, 20x, 100x relying on the efficiency profile of a specific workload.”
From 1,400 servers to 14: Early adopters see dramatic outcomes
The corporate positions Theseus as complementary to established platforms like Snowflake and Databricks, leveraging the Apache Arrow framework for environment friendly information motion. “It’s actually an accelerator to all these databases, fairly than competitors,” Abbott mentioned. “It’s nonetheless utilizing the identical SQL that was written to get the identical reply, however get there quite a bit sooner and faster in a parallel trend.”
Early adoption has targeted on data-intensive industries like monetary companies, the place use circumstances embody fraud detection, danger modeling and regulatory compliance. One massive retailer lowered its server depend from 1,400 CPU machines to simply 14 GPU servers after implementing Theseus, based on Aramburu.
Since launching at Nvidia’s GTC convention final March, Voltron Knowledge has secured about 14 enterprise prospects, together with two massive authorities companies. The corporate plans to launch a “check drive” model that can permit potential prospects to experiment with GPU-accelerated queries on terabyte-scale datasets.
Turning the GPU scarcity into a possibility
The present GPU scarcity sparked by AI demand has been each difficult and useful for Voltron Knowledge. Whereas new deployments face {hardware} constraints, many enterprises possess underutilized GPU infrastructure initially bought for AI workloads, belongings that may very well be repurposed for information processing throughout idle intervals.
“We really noticed it as a boon in that there’s simply so many GPUs out available in the market that beforehand weren’t there,” Aramburu famous, including that Theseus can run successfully on older GPU generations that may in any other case be deprecated.
The expertise may very well be notably precious for banks coping with what Abbott calls “trapped information” — data locked in codecs like PDFs and paperwork that may very well be precious for AI coaching however is troublesome to entry and course of at scale. “You’ve seen among the information that Voltron would present you is doubtlessly 90% simpler and environment friendly to maneuver information utilizing this expertise than commonplace CPUs,” Abbott mentioned. “That’s the facility.”
As enterprises grapple with the information calls for of AI, options that may speed up information processing and scale back infrastructure prices are prone to turn out to be more and more vital. The partnership with Accenture may assist Voltron Knowledge attain extra organizations going through these challenges, whereas giving Accenture’s shoppers entry to expertise that would considerably enhance their AI initiatives’ efficiency and effectivity.
