Dell and NVIDIA collaborate on supercomputing infrastructure for HPC and AI, integrating GPUs into unified hyperscale systems.

Dell has introduced the Dell PowerEdge XE8812 server, a new addition to the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA. The company positions it as purpose-built for the world's most demanding high performance computing (HPC) and AI workloads, featuring NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL4 architecture.

The server delivers up to 144 GPUs per rack, which Dell describes as "a generational leap in compute." The fanless, direct liquid-cooled design targets institutions running demanding workloads like molecular and multi-physics simulations.

Shifting from the NVIDIA GB200 NVL4 to the Vera Rubin NVL4, the platform gains expanded host memory, additional cores (expanding from 144 to 176), more GPU memory and enhanced compute capabilities.

According to Gartner, worldwide spending on AI is forecast to total US$2.52 trillion in 2026, a 44% increase year-over-year, with AI infrastructure accounting for an additional US$401 billion in spending. McKinsey notes that amid the AI boom, compute power is emerging as one of this decade's most critical resources. The scale and pace of AI and HPC workloads are outgrowing what incremental infrastructure upgrades can sustain, while the global push for AI innovation accelerates demand for high-performance infrastructure.

Arun Narayanan, Senior Vice President of Compute and Networking at Dell, states: "The institutions doing the world's most important research like decoding the human genome, modeling the energy systems of the future and building the sovereign AI infrastructure that nations depend on deserve infrastructure that matches the ambition of their work. The Dell PowerEdge XE8812 reflects Dell's commitment to pushing the boundaries of what's possible, giving these organisations the density, memory and open architecture they need to tackle workloads that once seemed impossible."

Chris Marriot, NVIDIA's Vice President of Enterprise Platforms, adds: "The convergence of AI and HPC is redefining what organisations should expect from their infrastructure. Dell and NVIDIA are raising that bar together, combining NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL4 architecture and CUDA-X libraries with Dell's engineering and at-scale deployment expertise to provide the performance, efficiency and openness required for the world's most demanding AI and scientific computing workloads."

Dell's AI Factory with NVIDIA is a portfolio of products, solutions and services tailored for AI workloads, serving over 5,000 customers globally. In collaboration with NERSC, Dell and NVIDIA are building Doudna, the next flagship US Department of Energy supercomputer. This system will be based on Dell PowerEdge XE8812 servers with NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL4 and connected with NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking, driving larger-scale HPC workloads, AI training and inference as well as data-intensive workflows.

Dell says the platform will "accelerate breakthroughs from the molecular level" to astronomy, "reshaping science" and everyday life. Current customers include AI company InstaDeep in France, the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK, which is using it to decode DNA, and Monash University in Australia.