Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1516067
We are in an era of unprecedented technological progress across sectors, with artificial intelligence (AI) at the helm. AI unlocks extraordinary storytelling and artistic potential. It empowers creators with enhanced tools and capabilities and enable them to create better and faster, engaging audiences with innova- tive experiences and prolific content choices. For these reasons, the industry is racing to adopt AI capabilities and unlock their potential. However, many companies are operating on legacy infrastructure that negates AI's e•cacy. In order to support these evolving capabilities special attention must be paid to the technology that supports it, placing AI squarely at the intersection be- tween technology and creativity. UNPRECEDENTED OPTIMIZATION AND EFFICIENCY GIVE WAY TO CREATIVITY AI delivers remarkable e•ciency gains compared to traditional VFX and animation approaches. At the heart of AI's significance in content creation lies its ability to accelerate output to levels previously deemed unattainable. Integrating AI technology delivers optimized and e•cient workflows that give way to astonishing productivity. Speed in production not only equals enormous cost savings, but it enables prolific output, meaning companies can amass the nearly on-demand content model that consumers desire. Studios are incorporating generative AI and realizing visual quality comparable to heavyweight 3D visual e‡ects. One way that these innovations are achieved is by redistributing the traditionally labor-intensive aspects to infrastructure, particu- larly GPUs, and enabling artists to focus their time on creative distillation through rapid iterations, resulting in a better product. The bottom line is that AI is not just enabling more content, but it is encouraging innovation as well. SPECIALIZED GPU AND THE QUEST FOR QUALITY AI technology requires specialized GPUs, like the H100, for speed and high- er-resolution outputs facilitated by larger VRAM capacities. A 24GB GPU is capable of handling up to a 2kx2k still image. However, the demand for 4k output necessitates the utilization of H100 GPUs boasting 120GB of VRAM. Solutions such as AMD's new MI300X help address the challenge. Announced in June 2023, as a dedicated generative AI accelerator, it o‡ers 192 GB of HBM and 5.2TB/second of memory bandwidth and placing them in the GPU playing field with NVIDIA, producing GPUs that meet the demands of AI. STORAGE IS THE CRITICAL FOUNDATION These AI tools and the technologies that support them all boil down to one massive output, data. The data must be stored and managed e‡ectively and in real-time for everything to work successfully. In other words, storage platforms must be aligned with the realities of unstructured data and the emerging needs of generative AI. Before generative AI can be deployed, media and entertainment companies must optimize their storage so that they can accommodate the influx of data, something that traditional storage architecture may fail to accomplish. They need new ways to cost-e‡ectively store the sheer scale and complexity of the data while providing easy access to quickly find and protect files and data as they move. This precipitates a shift towards centralized collaboration storage. Flash- based storage, like the Dell PowerScale F900, becomes indispensable due to the substantial size of AI models (often tens of gigabytes or more). Still, more importantly, the quantity of high-fidelity media and dependencies that AI And real-time production generate. Dell PowerScale caters to AI's demanding re- quirements and diverse data sets by employing cutting-edge technologies like distributed storage, data compression, and e•cient data indexing. In addition, managing the data created by generative AI models is becoming a critical aspect of the AI lifecycle. Newly generated data from AI interactions, simulations, or creative outputs, must be appropriately stored, organized, and curated for various purposes like model improvement and analysis. The bottom line is that creative advances through AI are reliant on the tech- nology enabling them. With the right partnerships and infrastructure, the fu- ture of content creation appears brighter and more dynamic than ever before. Learn more about unstructured data storage solutions for media and entertain- ment and generative AI at www.dell.to/media AI AT THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND CREATIVITY By Alex Timbs, Media and Entertainment Expert, Dell Technologies SPONSORED CONTENT