Oracle has announced an expansion of its partnership with Nvidia, unveiling new GPU options and AI infrastructure services on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This development highlights the evolution of the AI market and aims to offer greater flexibility for businesses of all sizes seeking to harness AI capabilities.
The key features of this announcement include the integration of Nvidia L40S GPUs into OCI’s compute offerings and the introduction of new virtual machine options for Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPUs.
"This is a significant milestone in our partnership with Nvidia and in the AI market,” said Leo Leung, VP of OCI and Oracle Tech, in a recent interview. “We’re addressing the growing maturity and expanding use cases for our customers."
The expanded Nvidia GPU lineup on OCI, ranging from entry-level to high-performance options, reflects the surging demand for AI computing power across diverse enterprise operations.
L40S GPU: A Versatile AI Accelerator
The new L40S GPU instances are designed for a variety of AI workloads, including inference, training of smaller models, and graphics-intensive applications such as digital twins.
Dave Salvator, director of accelerated computing products at Nvidia, described the L40S GPU’s adaptability: “We view it as a universal AI accelerator. It excels in traditional AI—primarily inference—but can also train smaller models and perform 3D rendering and video processing."
Oracle offers these GPU options in bare metal and virtual machine configurations, enabling customers to tailor their deployment of AI workloads. Leung noted, "Bare metal ensures maximum resource availability, which is critical for the initial phases of AI when performance is paramount."
OCI Supercluster: Powering Large AI Models
The announcement also enhances Oracle’s OCI Supercluster service, now capable of supporting up to 65,000 NVIDIA GPUs. This extensive scaling is tailored for organizations training massive AI models with hundreds of billions of parameters.
“Scale is crucial,” Salvator emphasized. “It involves a combination of compute and excellent networking. The faster deployment translates to quicker inferencing, allowing organizations to generate value sooner."
Industry analysts view this expansion as a strategic effort by Oracle to intensify competition in the AI cloud market, currently led by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. By leveraging its collaboration with Nvidia, Oracle is positioning itself as a strong contender for enterprises aiming to deploy large-scale AI workloads. This partnership also provides Nvidia with an additional cloud platform to showcase its cutting-edge GPU technologies in the enterprise space.
Broadening AI Access Across Business Sizes
As AI continues to reshape industries, the competition among cloud providers to offer robust and flexible AI infrastructure is intensifying. Oracle's latest offerings underscore its dedication to maintaining competitiveness in this dynamic landscape.
These new options create opportunities for businesses to optimize their AI infrastructure investments, potentially reducing barriers for smaller organizations while accommodating the needs of those managing demanding workloads.
Leung summarized, “As a cloud provider, we aim to serve all customer types—from tech giants hosting massive models to small engineering teams developing specialized applications.”
With this announcement, Oracle asserts its AI ambitions, positioning itself for intensified competition in the cloud AI market.