Korea Telecom (KT) has selected Graphcore IPU-POD systems to power its internet data centre with high-performance AI compute. Innovators in Korea will be able to access IPU technology through KT’s Hyperscale AI Service.
KT is the largest telecommunications business in South Korea, operating 14 data centres nationwide. The choice of Graphcore hardware for KT’s Internet Data Centre is significant and shows there is growing interest in Korea in IPU technology and its advantages for AI innovation.
The Hyperscale AI service allows businesses, financial firms, healthcare institutions, universities and research institutes to access leading AI R&D infrastructure on demand, supporting their AI adoption.
Established in collaboration with Megazone Cloud, Korea’s leading managed service provider, the AI R&D infrastructure solution is designed to be fast, secure and cost-effective. AI practitioners have the flexibility to increase workloads whenever they need to, as the service is easily scalable.
Graphcore IPU-POD systems were chosen to power the Hyperscale AI Service from KT and Megazone Cloud because of the IPU’s massive parallelism. Unlike GPUs, which are built for graphics processing, the IPU’s architecture is optimised to run AI algorithms and can process machine learning programs much more efficiently. As demand for AI research and development continues to grow in Korea, these efficiency gains will help innovators get faster results and could help them meet milestones in their AI roadmaps sooner.
Mihee Lee, Senior Vice President of Cloud/DX Business Unit at KT commented: “We hope that KT's Hyperscale AI Service will allow companies and institutions interested in AI to enter the sector without the hesitation caused by high-cost infrastructure.”
“KT will continue to introduce solutions that will drive the development of next-generation core technologies such as AI and blockchain based on South Korea's top backbone network and internet data centre."
