Dell Technologies has announced that it is incorporating support for Meta’s Llama 2 large language models (LLM) into its Dell Validated Design for Generative AI hardware and on-premises generative AI solutions. Llama 2 was originally introduced by Meta in July and has since been supported by various cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud. However, Dell’s partnership with Meta is unique as it brings Llama 2 to on-premises deployments.

Not only is Dell providing support for Llama 2 to its enterprise users, but it is also utilizing Llama 2 for its own use cases. This collaboration with Dell allows Meta to gain insights into how enterprises are using Llama, which will aid in expanding the capabilities of the Llama functionality over time.

According to Matt Baker, Senior Vice President of AI Strategy at Dell, incorporating Llama 2 support will help Dell achieve its goal of bringing AI to enterprise data. With Llama 2’s advanced capabilities, including up to 70 billion parameters, Dell’s customers can now run it on-premises alongside their data, enabling the development of exceptional applications.

In addition to supporting Llama 2, Dell was already offering support for the Nvidia NeMo framework for generative AI applications. This integration of Llama 2 provides organizations with another option to choose from. Dell will provide guidance to its enterprise customers on the necessary hardware for deploying Llama 2 and assistance in building applications that leverage the open source LLM.

Moreover, Dell is using Llama 2 for its internal purposes, both in experimental and production deployments. One of its primary use cases is supporting Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) as part of Dell’s knowledge base of articles. Llama 2 facilitates a chatbot-style interface for easy access to information within Dell.

It’s worth noting that Dell will generate revenue through its hardware and professional services for generative AI, but it will not directly monetize Llama 2, as it is freely available as open source technology.

Llama 2 has achieved substantial success, with approximately 30 million downloads of the open source technology in the past 30 days. Meta views Llama 2 not just as an LLM but as the centerpiece of an entire generative AI stack that includes Meta’s PyTorch machine learning framework. According to Joe Spisak, Head of Generative AI Open Source at Meta, Llama 2 adoption is growing across various players in the AI ecosystem, including major cloud providers and hardware vendors.

While Llama sees adoption in the cloud, it’s equally important to have partnerships that support on-premises deployment. The partnership between Meta and Dell showcases the value of open models like Llama 2, providing organizations with deployment options that prioritize data privacy.

Collaborating with Dell will enable the Llama development community to better understand and cater to enterprise requirements. This, in turn, will contribute to the continuous improvement of Llama models and the development of a safer and more open ecosystem.

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