 Good evening super computing superstars and welcome back to Denver, Colorado. My name's Savannah Peterson. We're here on theCUBE with live coverage of the biggest high performance computing event of the year. We have one more segment left before we get to have a little Colorado Kool-Aid. And no, I'm not talking about cannabis, I'm talking about cores. Don't know if you guys knew that term. I sense the nervousness over here on that open. Everyone, oh come on. We are talking about very cool, very nerdy technical stuff. We are. Got to make sure the audience is listening and on their toes. Lisa, let's open it up to you. Yes. First full day of super computing ever. I know. So exciting for you. I nerd it out. Takeaways, standouts, what you see, what you hear. Huge. Got to talk with some great companies today that all had great customer stories about how they're really helping customers embrace the AI revolution. So it moves from the peak of the hype cycle into a reality for businesses to really bring it into their organizations to make business impact. So that embracing the AI revolution was, I think, one of the themes that I heard throughout the conversations I had. Talked with some folks from Dell, Denver, DataWorks. We had Von Steward on from Vast Data and really kind of talking about the revolution there that they're seeing from a data management, data platform perspective. So the acceleration, John, you were talking this morning about how one of our sessions, how the change is happening overnight. And that was the vibe that I got today with all the customers and vendors I spoke with, how rapidly the pace of innovation is and has to be. I love that. And I couldn't agree more. I mean, it really feels like we're at a moment where lots of these things were happening in silos, perhaps pun intended, because there's a lot of conversations about silos on the show this week. But now the water level is rising together with all of us and the ships are able to sail into a place of applicability, which is what you touched on, which I think is super important. David, what about you? You've been roaming the floor, charming. Yeah, charming, charming everyone that I can. I think it's, what I really like about this conference is that there's a certain kind of hype that doesn't exist here. And the hype that does not exist here is the hype around this idea that everything that we do in the information technology world needs to be abstracted to some essence. You know, it's the kiss on the cheek that you feel when the breeze blows against you while you're standing in a flowing field of wheat. It's like, no, no, it's GPUs and CPUs and TPUs and storage and network gain. This is metal, this is cable, this is glass, this is water. There are freaking pool pumps. Because thermal dynamics are something that need to be dealt with. So it's really refreshing to actually be able to see, to step back and look at the big picture, but also have permission to look at the individual Legos themselves and take seriously this idea that it's really important to focus on infrastructure. I say this to my students all the time. If you take your eye off of the infrastructure ball, you're going to regret it. And I think there are a lot of companies here that would agree with that. It's been very, very interesting. And this is just really the, well, I guess sort of second day. First day for me, though. Well, I mean, we were all hot shots and early achievers in yesterday, nerding out, but I think it's really the first full day of people on the floor. John, this has got to be a really interesting full circle moment for you. You are one of these folks to begin with. I mean, you're obviously still one of these folks, but you got your start in this zone. I started, you know, as a software engineer, Eula Packard got out of the software business. That was my first real job. And so I had to become a hardware engineer and SE. And so they had PCs, they had mini computers. And so you had to connect stuff together. And you had applications. People would buy stuff and businesses would run on them. And there's a practical nature of it. And I think, you know, today's point, there's a lot of blocking and tackling that goes into the infrastructure that enables and powers applications to run. And then you've got middleware, you've got the concepts of that hardware and middleware applications. You know, it kind of doesn't go away. And I think, to me, this game is changing, but it's still the same. And you got, still got to store stuff. Now stores ain't going to look like it was before. You still got to move packets from point A to point B. That's networking. Server's got to run stuff. And more cores, more GPUs. And then you still got the same developers trying to build applications. Now, what I love about this world is that HPC has been grinding since 1998 on one mission. High-performance computing, make stuff go faster and power and cooling in large density. Things are things that they've grinded on. Now all of a sudden liberation is here. You got AI and HPC together. And then the perfect storm is the semiconductors are getting better. Fabulous and fab oriented. You got cloud scale going next level. And then data's exploding. So to me, I look at this as more of an opportunity recognition dream for entrepreneurs, people who are change agents, young students, looking at the landscape to make impact. And that's going to be about, you know, have an idea, sparking some creativity. And again, we heard from the CEO from Grock that as inference becomes big, the ability to create is going to change. You can actually get answers back faster from these streaming AIs, which will inject- Quick iteration from the AI to get you to a point of ideation. So I have been on this train of this creative culture is going to explode technically. And so I kind of see it here. So as the entrepreneurial side of me is like, wow, there's so much opportunity. Like, where do you, where do you go? And everybody sees it. Sorry, John. Along the creative cultural front, we had a great conversation with the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Go Ohio. And they were talking about this solution. The pride was real with that squad. He was amazing. The things, I appreciate that dedication. It all ends, you know? He was good. He was amazing. They talked about this solution they have called open on demand and how it's empowering everybody, from students, from like art students or life sciences students in completely different areas, researchers, industry professionals to have remote access to super computers. And that was something that really kind of was accelerated during COVID. He was talking about allowing the creativity to John's point of so many different types of non-technical people to harness the power of HPC and AI to really be creative and explore and make impacts within their industries. And that was such an interesting conversation that we had with him. And the wide adoption that open on demand has had in its first 10 years is remarkable. I think it's so, it's really great that you just brought that up. I mean, you're talking about people being able to do their area, their subject area of expertise, right? We just had a fantastic segment with Dell, they've had, well, a lot of fantastic segments with Dell over the course of the day and over the course of the week. But they were just on with Texas A&M and their ACES project and talking about that collaboration. They want researchers just to be able to come in and research. They want scientists to be able to come in and sequence the genome. Or in the case of one of their student projects which I really fell in love with, folks to be able to go in and recruit more STEM teachers for K through 12 so that not just this gen or the gen with previous to us, but the youngest of us are, you know, the we ones are growing up in a place where they can learn this technology natively in the way that I was a digital native. Imagine being an AI or quantum native. That I think is really fascinating. I think you brought up Dell. Dell, we appreciate them sponsoring theCUBE to be here and letting us program in our way which is get the audience the best content. Cause it's about unpacking the trends and that's a special gift. I want to thank Dell for that. But if you look at Dell, you know, I'll Dave, I never forget the Dell tech role a few years ago. They were on the theme of don't talk speeds and feeds. We'll talk solutions back in that day. And we were like, man, no, no, because we were on the hardware matters ban with like guys, if you look at the cloud, there's Silicon, Amazon was talking about Graviton early then. Well, let's go to swing back to hardware. And I remember Jeff Clark was on theCUBE and now the charge of Dell, Dave has hardware matters and he's like, of course it does, he had to think. And at that moment, it hit me that it's going to happen. And Dell's in a good position now to retool and be positioned, take advantage of the GPU wave and the integrated networking around it. And so I think you're going to see Dell catch this tailwind. So they have an opportunity to reset their systems and hardware matters. That's the show here. We did that a couple of years ago. It's like, oh yeah, we started hardware matters. But look at, that's all they're talking about. Speeds and feeds, but also the enablement. Because it's not about just some solution. They're all solutions. And so I think Dell's got a great sweet spot here. Yeah, it's interesting because this is very much hardware focused. Yet, when you look at AI infrastructure at least, the majority of AI infrastructure is actually software. And so there is that whole stack on top of the hardware stuff. And yes, things like connectivity become critical when we're talking about hardware specifically. I wonder, and we've got a couple of days left. I was struck when the internet was a new thing by people who complained that this new internet thing would stifle creativity. The kind of creativity that arose from going through a physical card catalog in a library and having serendipitous things happen. Oh, hey look, I'm looking for this book. What is this book? Well, the people who worried about that fundamentally didn't understand the power of the internet and how serendipity would be magnified immensely. I found myself being concerned that the sort of standardization of AI tools isn't going to lead to greater creativity, but it's gonna create this great narrowing to single sources of truth where all other options have been weeded out. And maybe that's, I hope that's a function of age and I am just as wrong as those people were wrong about the effect of the internet. But I am hearing people who are so afraid of missing out they're running towards standardization very, very quickly. So I think we're going to see this sort of running towards standardization and then I think there's going to be backlash. We've seen companies like Oracle go through this where they create their walled garden and it's great for a period of time. It doesn't work in the long term. The best indication of success in a tech company is to become the most hated tech company, right? Because you're indispensable. Oracle's doing great there. You're indispensable, you're indispensable. So people are frustrated because they no longer have the same leverage over you that they otherwise would. So it's interesting. So who is that now? Is that NVIDIA? Is it going to be? Well NVIDIA definitely overplayed their hand on the GPUs. That is definitely clear here. And from our other reporting, they kind of had a nice price market on the GPUs and they made a boatload of cash. Still are. And they still are. Look at that stock price. So barriers. What does classic business school tell you? Barriers to entry. That's my market. Your margin is my opportunity, Jeff Bezos said. So I think there's going to be a GPU opportunity. And now should I worry that an AI is going to pull out of this conversation? Dave Nicholson hates NVIDIA? Just to be clear, that is not true. No, they'll say I said it. You'll say it's not true. Well, if anything, if anything, you were saying that as a compliment, right? When you're the big power player, oh, I just about said something that I'm really glad I didn't caught myself right on the end of the day there. But I actually, I'm going to lovingly disagree with you, David. Which part? I don't think, well, there could be a few parts. I'm going to focus on the goal is to be hated or you know that you've made it when you're hated. I think there are actually very big players in the space that are adored and loved. And I don't just mean open AI and chat GPT. I mean, we are seeing, I mean, we were just at KubeCon all week last week and open source movement is huge. Enterprise is playing with these startups. We talked to Johnny Dallas. I'm going to bring it up multiple times on the show. If we've got engineering teams of three doing the same thing as 500. Or for example, I chatted with IQM earlier today. They're one of the other companies that are building quantum computers here. They only started four years ago and they only have 300 employees. They are building machines that are deploying AI and ML. Do you want me to finish the sentence or would you just like to talk? Because that's fine if that's what you would like to do. I'd like you to finish so I can chime in. I'm going to let you go because you are so excited to say whatever it is that it's just going to lose out of your body. I think Dave's point was not so much about that. He's talking about the old school enterprise companies. Back in the old days, you had to have a lock in. You had to actually extract rents from customers. Where I think you're getting at the point is with open source, the value creation is different. The sustainability advantage is different. So, yeah. Don't defend me, John Furrier. No, I'm trying to defend you. Savannah and I were arguing. Okay. I'm going to leave now. Okay. I love it though. But you're moderating, you're facilitating. Well, I was being sarcastic Savannah when I, I mean of course they don't want to be hated. It's just when you're in a position. Please man, explain to me what you meant. I love that. I love that. I, you know, I do a lot of work here to make y'all look sexy. The point is when you're so successful that companies feel like they have to do business with you because you're so good, there's a little bit of frustration there. There's a little bit of frustration there. Of course. No, there is. And I just wanted to play on that tension. I mean. Because I think we're in a very unique space where everyone's actually, yes, there are a few AI chip manufacturers that are obviously vying for what's going to be a very large market for the coming future. But my point there was we're seeing a lot more collaboration than you would see in historical industries, both from the student level all the way to the government. There's multiple government organizations in here, which I think is really interesting. You've got the NSA just around the corner here. Everyone beyond your best behavior. We've got NASA and then you've got universities literally advertised right behind us. So it is this very collaborative. I don't know that I like the term democratization. Maybe it's just because I studied political science in school and it's not exactly the right application. However, I do love seeing this emphasis on collaboration across teams and this less bully. I'm not going to tell you what I'm working on because the reality is everyone's going to need each other's tools and their multi-cloud setup. Well, access was what they talked about on their projects that are winning the Ohio project and Dr. Lisa was mentioning access. Getting people access. I just love to let researchers be researchers. Yeah. That's it in a nutshell. It's just the simplicity of that. Just let them. I'm excited about that with a lot of companies, vendors and folks today in terms of meeting the customers where they are, who are the users are and making sure that the experience to them is seamless. So to your point, they can do what their talents are really best suited for. I love Dell. Absolutely. I love Dell. I wouldn't have guessed from this segment. Since they are recording this, I want to thank Dell. You want to make sure. I want to make sure you go on record. I love my mom. Okay. Because everyone's wondering. You're going on record. Dell deserves a shout out for allowing us to have theCUBE here. Dell Technologies, enabling next generation AI. I love Dell for the record. Well, I have a question, I have a question. I have a question for Lisa. Yes. Have you noticed, if you haven't yet, be sure to get around. But have you noticed all the university stuff? Yes. Sab mentions it. Yes. I mean, it's. It's so cool. I love it. It's so cool. It's not trivial. It infiltrated across the entire show. No, it's not trivial. And this is, and I will, this is a hill all day on, I have fundamentally believed that one of the things that has held us back as a society is the lack of collaboration between the front lines of people in academia and research and the front lines of entrepreneurship. And when those two things intersect, people like to call it startups. No, it's not startups. Academics are over here in a complete and total different silo. And you've got venture capital and young guns with confidence over here or older guns with confidence over here in an entirely different silo. This is the only event that I personally go to and I would be very curious if you two feel that way where I see not only illustrative collaboration where someone's trying to do a little halo effect. Here's what we're doing for this group of minorities or younger people or less affluent people. But no, active collaboration, multiple projects with enterprise, with the academics and with the chipset manufacturers and new up and commerce that are coming into this. Yes. And yes, I am excited about it. It was collaboration and action. We can make fun of my gesticulation, all you want. 100%. Dammit, I care about this. I totally disagree with you. No, I totally agree. If, and I'll bet there are some large vendors who are cringing because they're saying, but we have students at our show. Well, I didn't notice them. Honey, they ain't coming up and talking to us about their projects. I haven't noticed them. I think that at every big tech show, it should be noticeable. Invites should go out, scholarship should be put together to pay, to have, make them stay four to a room because they're kids, but these shows should have these folks involved, if for no other reason. Look, it's going to be beneficial to those companies who want to hire these people. Exactly, talent attraction. So, that's why I love them. And to your point, the next generation is upon us. This summer, we call it the summer of AI love in San Francisco because they had the most meetups. I think New York was second, but I think San Francisco had over 100 different meetups, mostly under the age of 30. No wonder I didn't get a date, it was the summer of AI love. And so, they're totally into this, like standing up models, playing in open source. So, it's a ripe environment to entice and bring people in and send them and entice them, motivate them. And around the world, like, I mean, we're talking to Dell in Romania, I was speaking to Dell, and they've got a big community in Romania around this too, so it's not, I mean, Silicon Valley, we think of it as a tech hub and there are events there, I get that and I watch that as well. But what I love is these different groups popping up everywhere. It's kind of like we see with the CNCF community, the cloud community is so global, so many different countries involved and active and just curious about what's next. Well, why don't I ask you a question since it's your turn to answer. What was your favorite part about today? What interviews jumped out at you? What was the tea leaves saying to you? What were you seeing today? What jumped out at you, was it? So, as you know, this show is a bit like My Christmas and it's really hard to pick a favorite present in the same way you would, you know, pick a favorite child or whatever their all your favorite. But I was deeply motivated by our conversation with Grock. I thought Jonathan had a lot to say, both from an architecture perspective as well as just an implied perspective. So I mean, we're going to be, and he said something that I want to summarize that I thought was great, with risk for example, we're going to be going from risk detection to risk prevention. And if you apply that, we were talking about the financial industry there, but if you apply that to healthcare for example, or general avenues of safety, the difference between processing a batch at night once a day or once a week versus every second saves lives quite literally. And that brings me a lot of hope and a lot of joy that this boom will not go down the sky net side that you see a lot of people being fearful of, but that will end up in a place where we're doing more good faster across generations. I think that's because you're literally a lifesaver. So are you. That's a story I think we'll probably have to keep. On that note. Yeah, I was just going to say on that note, if you would like to see more heroics by theCUBE staff, please continue to tune into our coverage all week here live from supercomputing in the mile high city. My name is Savannah Peterson and thank you for tuning into theCUBE, the leading source for technology coverage.