Graphcore and Tencent Cloud have launched IPU Preview, a new service providing AI and machine learning developers with cloud-native access to Graphcore IPU compute systems.
The joint offering marks an important milestone for Graphcore, reflecting the rapid growth in demand for IPU technology and ease of use of our Poplar software stack.
Tencent Cloud is the latest large Chinese provider to make Graphcore’s IPU products available in the cloud, following the launch of Kingsoft Cloud’s Graphcore IPU Developer Cloud service.
At launch, the IPU Preview service offers users a choice of four Graphcore systems: the Bow Pod4, Bow Pod16, IPU-POD4 Classic, and IPU-POD16 Classic.
A range of widely-used machine learning models are supported for tasks including natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, recommendation and probability, as well as models for innovative AI workloads including sparse computing, vision transformers (ViT), generative pre-trained transformers (GPT), and graph neural networks (GNNs).
Ease of access
With IPU Preview on Tencent Cloud, AI innovators can quickly leverage the proven performance, flexibility, and scalability of IPU systems to achieve new breakthroughs, without the need to build their own datacenters.
New and existing Tencent Cloud customers can switch directly to the IPU Preview platform and migrate even large-scale AI workloads smoothly, enabling them to quickly evaluate and start using Graphcore’s compute systems
Using Tencent Cloud's Cloud Hosting Cluster (CHC) service, IPU Preview provides Cloud Object Storage (COS), Cloud File Storage (CFS), Tencent Kubernetes Engine (TKE) and other platform capabilities, providing enterprise-level customers with an overall solution for IPU computing power, storage and clustering on Tencent Public Cloud.
Continuing partnership
The launch of IPU Preview lays the foundation for Tencent Cloud and Graphcore’s ongoing co-development of cloud-native IPU products and larger-scale deployment of IPU technology together.
As part of the Technology for Good initiative, Graphcore and Tencent Cloud will also provide the IPU Preview service free of charge for non-profit AI projects that benefit society, part of an ongoing commitment to support AI-for-good research.
To use IPU Preview on Tencent Cloud, please visit our dedicated site.
