“We are launching a new brand around artificial intelligence, BullSequana AI, with a set of services,” indicates in the preamble Cédric Bourrasset, head of quantum computing and AI at Eviden. For the record, this entity of the Atos group which brings together cybersecurity, big data and cloud activities, and also includes consulting activity, is considered the most profitable division. Faced with the wave of artificial intelligence, this branch of Atos is however obliged to renew itself so as not to fall behind on this technology.
The offering unveiled by Eviden brings together five families of servers optimized for AI workloads. A portfolio designed for a range of use cases including edge, training, fine-tuning, large language model (LLM) inference and complex systems modeling.
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BullSequana AI 1200H, the holy grail of Eviden's AI offering
This range includes BullSequana AI 1200H, considered the flagship product of this offer. It is aimed at research centers, governments and the public sector more broadly. The rest of the range includes BullSequana AI 800, BullSequana AI 600 and AI 600H, BullSequana AI 200 – which is based on BullSequana SA (sold with AMD or Intel CPU) – and BullSequana AI 100 – this family being attached to an already existing server: the EXD (Xeon CPU; Ampere or Lovelace GPU).
With this offer, Eviden targets airports, stadiums, banks, health, automotive and industry. In addition to its BullSequana AI product range, Eviden will also offer Nvidia AI Enterprise, a cloud-native software platform to accelerate data pipelines and streamline the development and deployment of co-pilots and other generative AI applications. According to Cédric Bourrasset, this offer – which represents “saving time in terms of development” aims to “to accelerate around LLMs, in particular on the production of business use cases”.
First two customers for the BullSequana AI 1200H offer
“GENCI (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif) and the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) are our first client to benefit from this announcement”, indicates Cédric Bourrasset. The latter chose the BullSequana AI 1200H with 1456 Nvidia H100 GPUs to expand the capacity of their Jean Zay supercomputer and increase its maximum computing power from 36.85 to 125.9 Pflop/s. For the record, this is operated by the IDRIS (Institute for Development and Resources in Scientific Informatics) of the CNRS and will be made entirely available to users at the beginning of the summer in order to meet strong demand in the field. of generative AI.
Last March, Eviden announced that it had signed another contract with the Danish Center for AI Innovation, owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Danish Export and Investment Fund, for the construction of a supercomputer 'AI called Gefion. The latter must “respond to large-scale projects that use AI and prioritize the highest level of security to support Danish data sovereignty”. It will deliver 6 Exaflops of FP8 AI performance and is based on Nvidia's DGX SuperPOD architecture. In its mission, Eviden will deliver, install and configure the supercomputer, and provide maintenance and technical support throughout its lifespan.
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Nvidia, preferred partner for this offer
Eviden also indicates that it is working hand in hand with Nvidia to integrate some of the chip giant's latest components into its offering, notably the GH200 Grace Hopper. The company subsequently plans to integrate the Grace Blackwell GB200 “super chips”. “The goal is for all our servers and architectures to be compatible with Nvidia productscomments Cédric Bourrasset. Nvidia helps with compatibility by providing application development environments on which Eviden teams are trained. he adds.
Strong ambitions far from being tainted by Atos' reputation
“We have a significant ambition for Europe,” advances Cédric Bourrasset, ensuring that Eviden is very well placed in this market, respectively number 1 in Europe in the public sector and number 3 in the world, behind HPE and Dell. “We are the only European manufacturer still making servers”, he adds. And when asked whether the financial health of Atos does not risk ultimately impacting that of its entity Eviden, Cédric Bourrasset is confident to say the least: “We are moving forward, we have good products with the launch of offers that we control. We are still recruiting and we are making progress in R&D.”
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