F5 Powered by NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU Accelerates AI Application Delivery
F5 recently announced the launch of BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes, a new innovative AI application delivery and application security solution designed to provide service providers and large enterprises with a centralized control point to accelerate, protect, and simplify data traffic flowing in and out of large artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructures.
The solution leverages the high-performance NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU to improve data center traffic efficiency, which is critical for large-scale AI deployments. With an integrated view of networking, traffic management, and security, customers will be able to maximize the utilization of data center resources while achieving optimal AI application performance. This not only improves infrastructure efficiency, but also enables faster and more agile AI inference, and can ultimately provide enhanced AI-driven customer experiences.
F5 BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes is a solution designed specifically for Kubernetes environments and has been proven in large-scale telco clouds and 5G infrastructures. With BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes, the technology now offers customized services for leading AI use cases such as inference, retrieval augmentation generation (RAG), and seamless data management and storage. Integration with NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU minimizes hardware footprint, enables fine-grained multi-tenancy, while optimizing energy consumption and providing high-performance networking, security, and traffic management.
The integration of F5 and NVIDIA technology will allow mobile and fixed-line telecom service providers to easily transition to a cloud-native Kubernetes infrastructure to meet the growing demand for providers to adapt service functions to a cloud-native network function (CNFs) model. F5 BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes frees up CPU resources for revenue-generating applications by offloading data-intensive tasks to the BlueField-3 DPU. The solution is particularly beneficial for virtualized RAN (vRAN) or DAA for MSOs and 5G in the core network, and lays the foundation for unlocking the potential of 6G communications in the future.
Designed for high-demand service providers and large infrastructures, F5 BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes delivers the following value.
Simplify the delivery of cloud-scale AI services: BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes seamlessly integrates with customers’ front-end networks, significantly reducing latency while providing high-performance load balancing to handle the massive data demands of AI models with hundreds of millions of parameters and up to 10 trillion operations.
Enhance control over AI deployments: The solution provides a centralized integration point for modern AI networks with rich observability and granular information. BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes supports multiple L7 protocols beyond HTTP, ensuring enhanced inbound and outbound control at extremely high performance.
Protecting new AI environments: Customers can fully automate AI training and inference endpoint discovery and security capabilities. BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes can also isolate AI applications from targeted threats, strengthen data integrity and sovereignty, and address encryption capabilities that are critical in modern AI environments.
“The popularity of AI has created unprecedented demand for advanced semiconductors and technologies,” said Kunal Anand, F5’s chief technology officer and artificial intelligence officer. “Enterprises are now building AI factories, which are highly optimized environments designed for large-scale training of AI models and the powerful processing power required for inference, with amazing speeds and the lowest latency. F5’s powerful application delivery and security services form a powerful ecosystem with NVIDIA’s full-stack accelerated computing. This integrated solution covers the entire AI workload stack from the hardware acceleration layer to the application interface.
It provides customers with enhanced observability, granular control, and performance optimization. ”
Ash Bhalgat, senior director of AI Networking and Security Partners at NVIDIA, said, “Service providers and enterprises need accelerated computing to securely and efficiently deliver high-performance AI applications on large-scale clouds. NVIDIA is working with F5 to accelerate the delivery of AI applications to better ensure peak efficiency and seamless user experience supported by the BlueField-3 DPU. ”
“Realizing the potential of AI requires more data processing power than the industry has ever prepared,” said Kuba Stolarski, research vice president of IDC’s Computing Systems Research Practice. “For many companies, deploying cutting-edge AI requires extensive infrastructure construction, which is often complex and expensive, making efficient and secure operations more important than ever. F5 BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes addresses the performance and security issues of large-scale AI infrastructure. By providing optimized traffic management, enterprises can achieve greater data ingestion performance and server utilization during AI model inference, which greatly improves the customer experience for users of AI applications.”
“As AI workloads explode, enterprises are seeing a surge in demand for scalable, optimized, and controlled Kubernetes traffic management,” said Todd Hathaway, global practice manager for AI, application, and API security solutions at WTT. “With F5’s BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes directly deployed on NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPUs, this proven technology now allows large-scale AI deployments at the ideal access point. WWT customers will benefit from greater data ingestion performance and GPU utilization, while getting a better user experience during inference and strategic control points for security services. With advanced technologies from F5 and NVIDIA, two of WTT’s most strategic partners, we are further strengthening our global cybersecurity mission to deliver superior digital security.”
F5 BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes with NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU will be available in November 2024.