First dedicated AI-IX (AI Internet Exchange) designed for seamless interconnection between intelligent agents, next-gen networks such as 5G advanced and LEO satellites, and real-world applications including robotics and self-driving vehicles.
Global Internet Exchange (IX) operator DE-CIX is claiming a “World First” with its global ecosystem of exchanges which is AI-ready, with the implementation of Phase 1 of their AI Internet Exchange (AI-IX) to enable high-performance AI inference.
With Phase 1 completed, the company now has more than 50 AI-relevant networks – including both AI Inference as a Service and GPU as a Service providers, as well as a wealth of cloud service providers – connected to their platform, with over 160 cloud on-ramps globally, plus its highly scalable proprietary multi-AI routing technology.
As a result, DE-CIX can offer resilient, low latency, and high security interconnection specifically designed for real-time AI-powered use-cases, available not only at Europe’s largest Internet Exchange in Frankfurt, but at all DE-CIX locations worldwide.
Phase 2 of the rollout – to be carried out soon – will make the DE-CIX AI Exchanges Ultra-Ethernet-ready, capable of supporting geographically distributed AI training, as model training begins to move out of centralised facilities. Rollout of both phases is being undertaken globally. As such, DE-CIX will become the first operator to offer an AI-IX that can support both training and inference.
Multi-AI inference for today’s complex use-cases and tomorrow’s innovation
Similar to the rollout of the DE-CIX AI-IX, AI operations in general are divided into two phases:
– AI training and
– AI inference.
Both of these phases benefit from AI peering, with advantages including cost reductions, increased security, higher performance, and a reduction in complexity.
“With various predictions made for millions – even hundreds of millions – of AI agents in the coming years, the need for interconnection services to support their operations is growing massively”, explains Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX.
AI inference – where the agent is applied to real-world situations to provide real-time insights, interaction, and support – is dependent on highly resilient, low-latency, and secure connectivity.
Ivanov continues, “For enterprises to be able to exploit the advantages of AI, the digital lifeline consists of three elements, what I like to call the Digital Triangle of AI Inference Interconnection.”
For Ivanov, these elements are, firstly, the millions of agents that are currently emerging, many of these being multimodal; secondly, the AI-powered devices/applications (cars, robots, processes, etc.); and thirdly, modern transmission technologies (such as fibre, 5G Advanced, and LEO satellite networks, etc.). These three elements must be interwoven in a reliable, secure, and extremely high-performance manner using direct interconnection, otherwise known as peering.
“This is the core benefit of the DE-CIX AI-IX, which uses the unique DE-CIX AI router to enable seamless multi-agent inference for today’s complex use-cases and tomorrow’s innovation in all industry segments.”
Revolutionising AI training with Ultra Ethernet
In the second phase of the DE-CIX AI-IX rollout, the training of AI models is in focus.
With the advent of Ultra Ethernet, a new protocol for the routing of data traffic in a quality relevant for AI, the design of infrastructure for the heavy computations of AI training is changing.
“Until now, huge, centralized data centers have been needed to quickly process AI computing loads on parallel clusters,” explains Dr. Thomas King, CTO of DE-CIX.
“Ultra Ethernet is driving the trend towards disaggregated computing, enabling AI training to be carried out in a geographically distributed manner within a metropolitan area. This will revolutionize the infrastructure for AI training and offer companies new alternatives for designing resilient and more cost-effective private AI infrastructure.”
The next iteration of the Ultra Ethernet standard will be rolled out as soon as the software feature is made available by network hardware vendors, providing a significantly more cost-effective solution to the existing protocol for AI networking, InfiniBand. DE-CIX’s hardware is already able to support the enhanced Ethernet standard, and the operator will make it available upon rollout.
