IT Brand Pulse hasn't published a new brand survey report for a long time, and I thought the company was going to go out of business. Recently, however, it published a valuable brand research report on enterprise AI infrastructure, so let's take a look at it together.
At the end of May 2024, IT Brand Pulse released a survey of brand leaders on enterprise AI infrastructure. The report covers eight AI product categories, identifying market leaders and innovation leaders.
The survey was conducted in April 2024 and involved more than 200 IT professionals. The survey collects data through an online questionnaire in which participants are asked to answer who they consider to be market leaders and innovation leaders in each product category.
Since most of the respondents to the survey are IT executives of U.S. companies, only U.S. professionals are told.
The 2024 AI Enterprise Infrastructure Brand Leaders Survey covers 8 AI enterprise infrastructure products: servers, primary storage, file and object storage, network switches, SmartNICs, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), GPUs, and CPUs.
AI servers
AI server: A general-purpose server with high-performance CPUs and GPUs for rapid development and deployment of large-scale machine learning models. Market Leader: Dell TechnologiesDell Technologies is a long-time leader in the enterprise server market and innovation. The company made a decisive foray into the field of artificial intelligence with the launch of the Dell AI Factory, which offers a proven full-stack solution. IT professionals say Dell Technologies is the market and innovation leader in AI servers.
Judging from the votes, HPE is second, and Dell belongs to the first camp. The second camp has Supermicro and Lenovo, yes, there is a Chinese mainland company (of course, some netizens think it is not a Chinese company).
Innovation Leader: Dell Technologies
From an innovation perspective, Supermicro has done better, although there has been no change in the rankings. It's no wonder that Supermicro stock has risen amazingly recently, up 187% in the past six months.
AI primary storage
AI Primary Storage: High-capacity, high-bandwidth, low-latency flash storage is required to deliver data to LLM CPUs and GPU memory as quickly as possible.
Market Leader: Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies is a long-time leader in the primary storage market. The company made a decisive foray into the field of artificial intelligence with the launch of the Dell AI Factory, which offers a proven full-stack solution. IT professionals say Dell Technologies is the market leader.
This AI main storage, I feel that it should be noted that it is block storage, mainly for vector databases. Judging from the votes, Dell, HPE, NetApp, Pure Storage, and IBM are the TOP5, and the gap is not large. But Infinidat, although on the list, received almost no votes. It's not surprising that Infinidat's main promotion is still mixed flash.
创新领导者：Pure Storage
Pure Storage is an award-winning innovation leader in primary, file, and object storage. IT professionals recognize its patented DirectFlash module, which allows all-flash arrays to communicate directly with the original flash memory, as well as the company's pioneering development of low-cost QLC flash memory. Artificial intelligence is primarily a high-performance, high-capacity environment that requires the fastest possible import and export of massive amounts of data from storage.
From the perspective of innovation leaders, Pure Storage is clearly a big gap from other vendors. NetApp and IBM are also ahead of Dell. Brother Xigua felt that Dell's block storage was too late to support QLC, and at the time of the vote, its PowerStor had not yet announced its support for QLC.
AI file and object storage
File and object storage for AI: High-capacity, high-bandwidth, low-latency, and scale-out flash storage is required to get data to LLM CPUs and GPU memory as quickly as possible.
Market Leader: NetApp
Another current leader in enterprise brands is NetApp in file storage.
Everyone knows that the brand influence of NetApp file DATA ONTAP still maintains the first place in the AI era, which is good. However, IBM (GPFS) is also not old, and it is not far behind. Dell's Isilon was only in third, but it was still slightly ahead of Pure Storage's FlashBlade. The later startups, Vast Data, Qumulo, and Weka are file-oriented, while Cloudian and Scality are object-oriented. None of the startups received more than 5% of the vote. It shows that even in the era of AI, ginger is still old and spicy. Innovation Leader: Pure Storage
In terms of innovation, Pure Storage surpasses established vendors NetApp, IBM, and Dell. Among startups, Qumulo received the highest number of votes, even surpassing VAST Data, which surprised me a bit. Weka, Cloudian, and Scality received better votes than the market leaders, which makes perfect sense for startups.
AI network switches
Network switches for AI: InfiniBand and Ethernet switches with the ultra-high bandwidth and low latency needed to maintain LLM performance in massively scale-out environments.
Market Leader: Nvidia
Since the creation of IT Brand Pulse in 2008, Cisco has been ranked as the market leader in Ethernet switches, while Mellanox has been named the market leader in high-bandwidth, low-latency InfiniBand switches. Clearly, IT professionals are realizing that AI requires high bandwidth and low latency, as they have chosen Nvidia (formerly Mellanox) network switches as a market and innovation leader.
For AI switches, the IB status is very important, so it is normal for NVDIA to be first. It's just that Arista actually surpasses Cisco, which is a bit surprising. Could it be that Cisco is already a? Innovation Leader: NVIDIA
In terms of innovation leaders, NVDIA received the higher number of votes, far ahead of Arista and Cisco.
AI smart NICs
SmartNIC for AI: Offload the burden of network software processing, analysis, transformation, security, compression, and encryption.
Market Leader: AMD
AMD (formerly Xilinx and Pensando SmartNIC) was named a market leader in our first-ever survey of brand leadership for SmartNICs, reflecting IT professionals' perception of Xilinx's long-standing market position and leadership in the space.
In terms of the results, AMD is the first camp, NVDIA and Altera are the second camp, and Marvell is the third camp. In 1988, Altera became a publicly traded company through an initial public offering (IPO). On December 28, 2015, the company was acquired by Intel and became a newly formed business unit called the Programmable Solutions Group (PSG). Therefore, I think it makes more sense that Altera should actually be written as Intel here.
Innovation Leader: ™ NVIDIA® Corporation
In our inaugural survey of SmartNICs, NVIDIA (formerly Mellanox SmartNIC) was named an Innovation Leader. The survey results show that IT professionals value tight integration and added value with ™ NVIDIA® network switches, GPUs, and SmartNICs.
In terms of innovative leading brands, NVDIA is still the most anticipated by users, because it has GPUs, switches, and can form a close ecosystem with SmartNIC.
AI HBM
High-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI: HBM is embedded in the CPU and GPU to provide faster data access with lower power consumption. For AI, it is a key component to improve performance and reduce power consumption.
Market Leader: Samsung
Samsung's aura of household name shines through its HBM product brand. IT experts rated Samsung as a market and innovation leader.
Judging from the voting of market leaders, Micron and Samsung are not much different, indicating that the HBM market is a double-headed market. SK Hynix did not get more than 10% of the vote.
Innovation Leader: Samsung
From the perspective of innovation, Samsung and Micron have a relatively large advantage, and SK Hynix also won more than 10% of the votes.
AI GPU
GPUs for AI: Fast and extremely energy-efficient. This means optimal performance for AI training and inference.
Market leader: ™ NVIDIA® Corporation
Any other results would be shocking. Huang and Nvidia are ushering in a new era of GPU-centric AI computing, and it's almost impossible to avoid global news. The only surprise is that Nvidia didn't get all the votes of the GPU market and innovation leaders.
The results of this poll feel similar to market share. Intel and AMD are not yet capable of challenging NVDIA. Innovation Leader: ™ NVIDIA® Corporation
In terms of innovation, NVDIA's votes have dropped, and AMD has surpassed Intel's votes. At the time of voting, AMD's stock suddenly went up sharply, but now it's down again.
AI CPU
CPUs for AI: Cheaper than GPUs, but due to the limited number of cores, CPUs can effectively train small neural networks with limited datasets.
Market Leader: Intel
For the 17th year in a row, Intel has been named a leader in the CPU market and innovation, only this time for "AI CPUs."
In the CPU market leader (the problem in the picture above should be mistaken, not GPU), Intel is still the boss, even in the AI era.
Innovation Leader: Intel
But from an innovation perspective, this year, in the innovation leaders poll, AMD was only 9 percentage points behind the number one Intel.
summary
This report shows the competitive landscape of major players in the field of AI infrastructure. Dell Technologies and NVIDIA excelled in several categories, while Pure Storage and Samsung also demonstrated strong innovation capabilities in specific areas. For companies, the product and technological innovations of these brand leaders can be used as a reference for choosing partners and investments. With the rapid development of AI technology, the needs of enterprise infrastructure are also constantly changing. This survey provides us with a window into market dynamics and innovation trends to help us make informed decisions in the fast-growing field of AI. Supporting the US AI infrastructure brand survey, Chinese mainland manufacturers, because Lenovo acquired IBM's servers, so there is still a certain sense of existence. In other categories, there is nothing to do with Chinese companies.
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