Nvidia has for years advanced the idea of an “AI Factory,” and now its partner VMware has created a product with the same name that does most of the same things, but with one vastly important difference: it uses AMD hardware. VMware was an early supporter of Nvidia in the enterprise and long ago created tools to virtualize GPUs. Nvidia needed that help because its hardware was very expensive even before the generative AI boom, so using virtualization to allow higher utilization rates just made sense. The two companies stayed close and in 2023 combined to announce “VMware Private AI Foundation with Nvidia”, a bundle that includes the myriad tools needed to run inference workloads, plus tools to help AI departments automate and manage them. “It simplifies Gen AI deployments for enterprises by offering an intuitive automation tool, deep learning VM images, vector database, and GPU monitoring capabilities,” VMware enthused at the time. A few weeks after the joint announcement, Nvidia started talking about “AI Factories” – essentially a reference architecture that describes all the hardware and software needed to run inference workloads. Nvidia’s AI factories center on its own hardware and software, along with servers from the likes of Dell, Lenovo, and HPE. Those hardware giants brand their implementations “AI factories.” As Nvidia started pushing the AI factory, VMware kept enhancing its Private AI tools that make its flagship Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud bundle a good host for AI workloads. On Monday at its VMware Explore conference, the Broadcom virtualization division announced its own version of an AI Factory and said it “streamlines AI infrastructure management by fully automating hardware provisioning, software stack enablement, and end-to-end lifecycle management.” If that sounds a lot like the spiel for the Private AI Foundation, that’s no coincidence because the new offering is a rebranded sequel that adds some useful tech, such as the ability to deploy a model once, and share it securely among users such as tenants or business units. With interest in AI sky-high, this should be welcome as it means organizations won’t need discrete hardware for each of their teams’ AI needs – potentially saving money and putting IT teams in control of a central pool of AI infrastructure instead of trying to identify and rein in shadow AI implementations. VMware has also bundled tools that allow orgs to use AI infrastructure on-prem and in the cloud, and can figure out where to run a job and which model to use to keep costs low. Again, this will be welcome because cloudy AI can rack up huge bills in a hurry, as can using an LLM when a smaller, more specific, and cheaper model can do the job. The Broadcom business unit also offers secure AI sandboxes and governance tools that it says will ensure agents don’t exceed their authority, or access resources you don’t want them to touch. The AI Factory requires VCF, and runs on servers from Cisco, Dell Technologies, Lenovo and Supermicro. Broadcom has also teamed with AMD on a version of the VMware AI Factory that works with AMD Instinct GPUs and the open AMD ROCm software ecosystem. At present, VMware’s AI Factory doesn’t apply to Nvidia’s AI Factories, despite the two sharing some components and intentions. Prashanth Shenoy, VP of product marketing at Broadcom’s VCF Division, told The Register that the VMware AI Factory is an “evolution” of VMware Private AI Foundation with Nvidia. “VMware AI Factory represents a full-stack, automated operational system designed to treat AI token generation as a continuous production pipeline,” he said, pointing out that it supports “multiple accelerator architectures and AI tool chains” and that Nvidia is “our longest-standing GPU vendor partnership.” VMware hasn’t ruled out building an AI Factory for Nvidia and its AI Factories. But for now, the virtualization giant has pinched its long-term partner’s product name for a competing offering that promotes Nvidia’s strongest rival – and all in the name of reducing your AI bills. This is not the only example of strangely enmeshed co-opetition on display here at VMware Explore: On day one of the conference, The Register has already chatted with delegates from Red Hat – which competes with VMware with its OpenShift Virtualization but also partners with it because some people run OpenShift inside VMware – and Microsoft, which offers a cloudy VMware service plus several products that compete directly with Virtzilla. ®

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