The list of launch partners is: 2CRSi, Atos, Boston Limited, BSI, Dell Technologies, Digital China, Inspur, Lambda, Macnica/Cytech, Meadowgate Technologies, Megazone, OCF, Penguin Computing, Tech Data Europe, Tech Data US, and Wildflower International.

The scale and international reach of Graphcore’s go-to-market partner program reflects the momentum that has already built around the company’s Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), as well as the high demand for its recently announced second-generation IPU systems.

“The Graphcore Elite Partner Program allows us to serve commercial, academic and governmental customers around the world, through some of the most trusted names in the information technology supply chain,” said Graphcore CEO Nigel Toon.

“Our new IPU-M2000 system offers unparalleled compute performance, with a cost of ownership that is far more attractive than the legacy technologies that have dominated machine intelligence until now. That’s creating a wave of excitement and commercial opportunities that span the globe.”

The Graphcore Elite Partner Program allows founding members to offer their customers the leading next-generation AI computing platform, at a time when artificial intelligence is permeating every industry, from finance and healthcare to automotive and consumer internet.

In addition to the growing need for AI compute within the private sector, demand is growing rapidly in the public sector and from research institutions. Artificial Intelligence is also, increasingly, assuming many of workloads previously undertaken by high performance computing (HPC).

“Graphcore is clearly lining up the right partners to make the MK2 and IPU Machine broadly available,” said Karl Freund, Sr. Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

“I expect the company to expand this list further as customers gain experience with the highly flexible IPU Machine and the Poplar software development stack.”

source: Graphcore