VMware to Acquire Bitfusion to bolster its AI / ML Strategy for On-premise and Hybrid Cloud Environments

VMware announced its intent to acquire, an Austin, Texas-based Bitfusion to help bring AI (Artificial Intelligence) / ML (Machine Learning) technologies on-premises and in hybrid cloud environments. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

VMware’s strategy of supporting AI and ML-based workloads by virtualizing hardware accelerators is now possible with the acquisition of Bitfusion. The acquisition aligns with VMware's "Any Cloud, Any App, Any Device" vision, notes the announcement.

Bitfusion specializes in virtualization of accelerated compute with a strong focus on GPU technology. Bitfusion claims to be the industry's first AI (Artificial Intelligence) enabled Infrastructure disaggregation platform for GPUs (graphics processor units),  FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays) and ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits).  It provides better sharing of GPU resources among isolated GPU compute workloads, even allowing sharing to happen across the network

Executive Opinion

In a blog post, CEO of Bitfusion, Michael Zimmerman, said, "Upon close, the acquisition of Bitfusion will help to bolster VMware’s strategy of supporting AI- and ML-based workloads through interposing, distributed virtualization and bringing many benefits of virtualized ML/AI infrastructure, regardless of location in the environment – on-premises and/or in the cloud."

More on Bitfusion's Acquisition

Generally, hardware accelerators are deployed on bare metal hardware. In a virtualized environment, hardware accelerators do not perform well or not at all utilized today. This lead to poor utilization, poor efficiencies, and limits possibilities of sharing, abstracting and automating the infrastructure.

Bitfusion software platform helps decouple specific physical resources from the servers they are attached to in the environment. The platform can share GPUs in a virtualized infrastructure, as a pool of network-accessible resources, rather than isolated resources per server, says the announcement.

VMware plans to integrate Bitfusion Flex Direct into the VMware vSphere platform. This will enable VMware to deliver a multi-cloud model to the accelerated data center. It will also bridge the gap between the traditional CPU-only and hardware-accelerated Computing infrastructures.