Jeff Clarke, Dell | Dell Technologies World 2024
Summary
TLDRIn this DTech World interview, Jeff Clark from Dell discusses the transformative impact of AI on the tech industry. He highlights Dell's AI Factory, emphasizing the importance of data as a differentiator and the need for an open and broad ecosystem to drive AI adoption. Clark also touches on societal impacts, the potential for increased developer productivity, and the evolution of computing architectures. The conversation hints at Dell's strategic approach to leveraging AI and its implications for future tech innovation.
Takeaways
- 🌟 Jeff Clark, from Dell, highlighted the significance of AI and its role in transforming the competitive landscape, emphasizing the importance of AI adoption for businesses.
- 📈 Data is identified as a key differentiator, with 83% residing on-premises and 50% created on the edge, suggesting AI should be deployed where the data is for efficiency, effectiveness, and security.
- 🛠️ Clark discussed the importance of an open and modular architecture to keep up with rapid advancements in technology, allowing for more flexible and adaptable AI implementations.
- 🤝 The foundation of AI is an open and broad ecosystem, which is critical for advancing technology and fostering innovation.
- 🚀 AI is set to have a profound societal impact, potentially reshaping work and life as significantly as the Industrial Revolution did, though the exact nature of these changes is hard to predict.
- 💡 AI is enabling valuable resources to be utilized more effectively, freeing up time for more valuable work and streamlining processes.
- 🔧 Dell's strategy involves creating an optimized system architecture that focuses on data movement and cognitive processing, rather than traditional computing elements like operating systems and virtualization.
- 🏆 Dell is positioned to excel in the AI ecosystem due to its broad portfolio, spanning from edge devices to servers, storage, networking, and professional services.
- 💻 The introduction of AI and new computing architectures could impact the PC market, with potential for both compression and elongation of PC cycles depending on the value and productivity gains delivered.
- 📡 Dell is now including ARM-based processors in its offerings, starting a new era for PCs that moves beyond the traditional x86 architecture and opens up more choices for performance and optimization.
- 🛑 The conversation touched on the balance between using merchant silicon partners and designing custom silicon, with the potential for both approaches to drive innovation and cost efficiency in the evolving tech landscape.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the discussion with Jeff Clark at Dell Technologies World?
-The main focus is on the role of Dell in delivering AI to its customers, the importance of data as a differentiator, and the acceleration of AI adoption through an open and broad ecosystem.
How does Jeff Clark describe the AI Factory's role at Dell?
-Jeff Clark describes the AI Factory as a key component in how Dell is delivering AI to its customers, focusing on making AI more accessible and easy to adopt, as well as accelerating its adoption.
What percentage of data is created on the edge according to Jeff Clark's presentation?
-According to Jeff Clark, 50% of data is created on the edge.
Why does Jeff Clark believe AI should go to the data?
-Jeff Clark believes AI should go to the data because it is more efficient, effective, and secure when processed close to where the data is generated.
What is Jeff Clark's stance on the implementation of AI on the edge?
-Jeff Clark supports a wide range of AI implementations on the edge, emphasizing that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
How does Jeff Clark view the societal impacts of AI similar to historical technological revolutions?
-Jeff Clark draws parallels between AI and past technological revolutions like the Industrial Revolution, noting that while it's hard to predict exact societal impacts, AI is likely to free up valuable resources for more valuable work.
What is Jeff Clark's perspective on the potential increase in developer productivity due to AI?
-Jeff Clark is excited about the potential for AI to streamline tasks, allowing developers to spend more time on creative work, which could lead to significant productivity gains.
How does Jeff Clark describe Dell's approach to working with various computing architectures?
-Jeff Clark describes Dell's approach as being open and agnostic to specific technologies, focusing on optimizing systems and delivering the best solutions for their customers.
What does Jeff Clark think about the potential of AI in terms of enterprise architecture?
-Jeff Clark believes that AI represents a new computing architecture that is evolving and will continue to do so, especially as it transitions from training to inference.
How does Jeff Clark view the role of open and modular architecture in AI development?
-Jeff Clark sees open and modular architecture as crucial for taking advantage of rapid advancements in AI, allowing for more efficient and effective implementations.
What is Jeff Clark's opinion on the societal impact of AI in terms of work and productivity?
-Jeff Clark suggests that AI will enable people to focus on more value-added work, streamline tasks, and potentially increase productivity, leading to a greater societal impact over time.
Outlines
🌟 AI and the Future of Work at Dell
In this segment, Sanah Peterson and Dave Valante interview Jeff Clark, a key figure at Dell with multiple roles, following his keynote at the AI Factory. Jeff discusses Dell's strategy in delivering AI to customers, emphasizing the importance of data as a differentiator and the need for an open and modular architecture to keep pace with rapid advancements in AI. He highlights the transformative potential of AI, comparing it to the Industrial Revolution, and predicts that AI will free up valuable resources, allowing people to focus on more valuable work, thus increasing productivity and innovation.
🚀 Dell's Commitment to an Open AI Ecosystem
Jeff Clark delves deeper into Dell's approach to AI, stressing the significance of an open and broad ecosystem for the technology's advancement. He talks about the societal impacts of AI, suggesting that it will allow individuals to focus on more meaningful tasks, thereby increasing productivity. Jeff also addresses the potential for AI to enhance the work of developers and sellers within Dell, aiming to streamline processes and enable more efficient work practices. The conversation touches on Dell's partnerships with various tech giants and their commitment to an open architecture that can evolve with the rapid pace of AI development.
🛠️ Dell's Unique Positioning in the AI Market
Jeff Clark outlines Dell's comprehensive portfolio and its strategic positioning in the AI market. He discusses the company's edge in providing AI solutions at the edge, through PCs, and in data centers, highlighting Dell's broad skill set and capability in system integration and deployment. Jeff also mentions the importance of Professional Services in meeting customer expectations and the company's philosophy of being 'pleased but never satisfied,' which drives continuous improvement and innovation.
💡 The Impact of AI on PC Innovation and Cycles
In the final paragraph, the discussion turns to the impact of AI on PC cycles and innovation. Jeff Clark considers whether AI will compress or elongate PC cycles, suggesting that the increased productivity enabled by AI could lead to a desire for more advanced technology, thus driving the cycle. He also addresses the introduction of ARM-based processors in PCs, marking a new era for the platform beyond x86 architecture. Jeff emphasizes the importance of optionality in silicon choices and the potential for商户 silicon partners to drive innovation and lower costs in the industry.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡AI Factory
💡Data
💡Edge Computing
💡Open Modular Architecture
💡Ecosystem
💡Disruptive Technology
💡Productivity
💡Developers
💡Hybrid AI
💡Silicon
💡Innovation
Highlights
Sana and Dave Valante are covering Dtech World in Las Vegas, Nevada, discussing the impact of AI and data technology.
Jeff Clark from Dell discusses the AI Factory and its role in delivering AI to customers, focusing on ease of adoption and acceleration.
Clark emphasizes the importance of data as a differentiator, with 83% of data residing on-premises and 50% created on the edge.
AI should go to the data for efficiency, effectiveness, and security, according to Clark's presentation.
The need for a wide range of AI implementations due to the absence of a one-size-fits-all solution is highlighted.
Clark talks about the importance of an open modular architecture to take advantage of rapid AI developments.
The foundation of AI is an open and broad ecosystem, crucial for its advancement, as per Clark's keynote.
AI's societal impact is compared to the Industrial Revolution, with potential for profound cultural and economic changes.
AI is expected to give valuable resources more time to do valuable work, streamlining tasks and allowing for higher value-added work.
Developers could gain more creative time, potentially increasing productivity and the quality of development work.
The potential for AI to improve seller efficiency by better informing and connecting marketing and selling data is discussed.
Dell's open stance on various computing architectures, including GPUs and CPUs from different vendors, is emphasized.
Clark describes a new computing architecture centered around data, with AI and machine learning at its core.
The evolution of AI from training to inference and the concept of quantization for efficiency are touched upon.
Dell's unique positioning with a broad portfolio, from edge devices to professional services, is highlighted by Clark.
The potential for AI to compress or elongate PC cycles based on performance and productivity improvements is debated.
Dell's recent announcement of an Arm-based PC with Qualcomm and the implications for the PC market are discussed.
The impact of cloud players creating their own silicon and the role of merchant silicon partners in cost reduction is considered.
Clark reflects on the new era for PCs with the introduction of Arm-based processors and the innovation it brings.
The potential for increased PC innovation, including 24-hour battery life and optimized performance, is anticipated.
Transcripts
good afternoon AI fans and welcome back
to beautiful Las Vegas Nevada we're here
Midway through day two of three days of
coverage of dtech world my name is sanah
Peterson joined by Dave valante I feel
smarter than I did when I woke up this
morning what about you yeah well we had
the Duel at least dual master class this
morning like jeel or triy Master Class
Ser we're going to go deeper now and and
know and and now we're going to take it
one step further with our next guest
Jeff Clark the you you're you know you
have 17 jobs at Dell I when we were
talking I I was going to introduce you
just by your title right now but you
literally gave us you know four
different roles you're basically playing
internally you were the keynote this
morning huge room full of people
listening to you drop serious knowledge
about data about AI about everything can
you give us a little
recap it was a fun morning yes it was
big morning for Dell
we talked about the AI Factory its role
our role how we're delivering AI for our
customers and ultimately how do we
accelerate the adoption how do we make
it easy and we spent a whole lot of time
talking about how to take this
tremendous I think groundbreaking
technology that is so disruptive
gamechanging changing the basis of
competition and then enabling our
customers because quite frankly if
you're not doing it it's going to be
done to you
and it's going to change the basis of
competition again as I mentioned and we
had some fun with that today so I threw
out a few things that I think are
important sort of five things that we
believe in to help accelerate the
adoption of AI one of those being the
data the data is the differentiator 83%
of the data is on Prim 50% of it created
on the edge and because of that we
believe AI goes to the data because it's
more efficient more effective more
secure we believe that there is no one
siiz fits-all so it's going to be a wide
range of implementation out on the edge
out on the PC in a department in a data
center combined combined data centers
and then I talked about two versions of
open an open modular architecture so you
can take advantage of the rapid
development and advancements I think
about a year ago where we were and where
we are today and what's coming oh my
gosh and then the last component that we
believe in that drives the foundation of
AI is an open and Broad ecosystem
because it's equally advancing you um
super critical you likened the the AI
wave you said we haven't seen anything
this big since and you I know you love
trains since the Industrial Revolution
right steam power the the societal
effects of folks moving you know The
Agrarian societ moving to the city and I
think look PCS were awesome right made
us all more productive mobile Cloud big
data but but nothing like what you're
projecting here how do you think what do
you think of the societal impacts we all
going to move back to the country are we
going to move in space are we going to
start
flying very hard to predict well I I I
don't think when people move from farms
moved to cities began to work in
factories and we had the massive
modernization that was associated with
the Industrial Revolution we knew where
we were going and we reflect back on it
as historians and we can see it had
these profound impacts culturally social
impact or social economic impact and a
variety of other
ways what what I can tell you at least
our experience inside Dell and working
with our
customers what we're finding is it takes
our most valuable resources and gives
them more time to do more valuable work
mhm it allows people to
do rather than what we call inside at
least our company some of this
connective tissue work to kind of make
it work that now is streamlined because
you've simplified standardized
automated those Basics go away of people
having to do the task and you can apply
intelligence gain knowledge and then
drive more value added work so maybe
that's a way of saying which I really
believe we will all do greater value
work in time have a greater impact in
time and then for us again I think about
having our developers have more time to
develop yes be more efficient at develop
think about the productivity gains that
we can have with our large R&D footprint
and our ability to develop more things
faster higher quality I get excited
about that being Absol a former
developer it's only I I it always shocks
me every time this stat comes up it's
only 27% of a developer's day that's
spent actually creating or their week
their work week if we got 73 more per
creative time or even 50% more creative
Time Imagine what we can create world's
our oyster top desile uh software
companies have roughly 60% of an
engineer developer's time coding
architecting thinking about how to code
that's the gold standard to get
everybody to and once you get to 60 why
not 80 why not 90 why not more right
yeah absolutely think about
the the potential the latent potential
that is tied up in the nonsense that
we've created and the human potential
that could be gained in making them more
productive think about our sellers the
same way our sellers don't spend enough
time selling how do we get them selling
more often let's inform them better
let's Bridge the marketing data and the
selling data to help inform with our
customers how to to best meet their
needs the
possibilities are endless almost your
your conversation with Charlie kaas was
was really quite interesting and
enlightening I mean they broadcom made a
bet that a long time ago we're going to
connect all these you know NP gpus and
CPUs xus together it's a trend that
obviously you guys you got Intel you got
AMD you got Nvidia you got arm-based
stuff you got you know others risk five
you're sort of agnostic to all this and
then you double down on the ones that
are going to serve your customers best
in the moment we're open Dave but yeah
you're open but yeah yes you always have
been right yes sir but so I'm trying to
figure out
like is what you're doing in in gpus
with Nvidia is it just sort of another
opportunistic move or is it something
that
has has potentially the legs of
you know winel back in the day um well
how do you think about that I I think
about it in the following way I tried to
describe it this morning and hopefully I
I I got this concept across this is a
different Computing architecture yep so
winel arguably is the old traditional
Computing architecture certainly is in
reference to the data center this
morning and we're creating and a new one
has been created
and if you think about how it's being
created it's around what I like
Charlie's analogy around the human body
the gpus the brain the networking is the
heartom storage is the
lungs the oxygen in would you expect
anything less techology is really going
for it this year well but but if you
pull that
together that's what we're building is
an optimized system there notice we
didn't talk about operating system we
didn't talk about virtu ization we
talked about data and getting data to
the cognitive part moving it in a very
fast way extracting it out of these
storage subsystems how do we deliver
those workloads via containers it is a
new architecture that's being invol
evolving and as we go from training to
inference it's going to evolve again I I
use the word quantization today which is
essentially the world try trying to make
things much more efficient whether it's
absolute performance being efficient and
you think of things around going from n6
N8 N4 you talk about going better memory
utilization floating Point 16 to 8 to
four as well you can really take these
models and take this infinite data sets
and put them into more finite defined
data sets and you can Rune the model
retrain it and get much more efficient
it's a different
architecture and you I I loved when I
was doing my homework for this show
Morgan Stanley calling you the best
architecture for this the best way to
play in the AI ecosystem game when it
comes to
Enterprise when you're looking out at
the room today when you hear things like
the market validating that when you see
your team performing at the level that
they're performing right now how does it
make you
feel oh probably uh mounting
expectations yeah we have a lot we have
a lot to do to help our customers
through this I I I tend to sit back and
look at what we haven't done versus what
we have done it's kind of a trade of our
company pleased but never satisfied
might have heard that from my
boss but never satisfied going to take
that tend to think about why we we
believe we're uniquely positioned as the
breadth of our portfolio as I mentioned
we believe AI goes out to the edge we're
at the edge we're a very very large
commercial PC uh provider to our
customers we're at the edge with a edge
business which I was on stage with you
last year talking about our Edge
business native Edge specific Al and
then you talk about servers and storage
and networking then ultimately to
Professional Services and then I talked
about the complexity of these of these
systems that we're building the level of
integration speed of deployment time to
First token time to
Value what a what a playground that we
can operate in and we think we have the
the breadth of skill and capability to
do it so you just had Doug Schmidt up
here I think well Doug's got he's got a
whole list of things for me to do and
Professional Services so we can
accomplish what our customers expect of
us so I think it's rising expectations
is how I would characterize it and we're
going to rise to the occasion I got to
ask Jeff the the PC question we got I
got my new XPS here and then you go Ling
those yeah and except you just announced
the aipc and I'm like well I want one of
those so my question is is is WW
dell.com XPS I know but I just got this
one so will will like you can have two
okay all right well fair enough I've got
will Ai and I can argue both sides of
the equation will it compress or
elongate PC Cycles I could argue on the
one hand more power so I might be able
to keep it longer on the other hand I
want the next one you remember we went
from 286 to 386 we were buying PCS every
two years because we had to have the
latest and greatest it that was fun so
what is your assumption
here I think it's too early to call okay
my my belief is if you look at that
pattern that you and I have been around
the block for a while of 286 I remember
28616 20
38616 20 penium and so on that each
incremental step in performance you were
more productive you could do more things
there's no reason to believe with the
horsepower that we're harnessing in
these npus and looking at the
measurement of what we launched earlier
in the year with meteor Lake what we
just launched launched with our Qualcomm
partnership and the five products we
talked about yesterday and again today
and what's to come the leap frogging
leap frogging of performance is
massive so now we're going to unleash
the ability to you're going to have a
personal assistant in front of you that
personal assistant is going to help you
search it's going to help you organize
it's going to help you do live caption
it's going to help you recall it's going
to help you create aren't you going to
want more of that yeah so the the answer
comes down to if it makes us more
productive like that earlier cycle that
you just described you know through
Pentium it always does then then it's
going to be a compression of the
otherwise we'll be in a replacement
cycle but if if if to your point if
there's true incremental value that can
be delivered in the form of productivity
or new skill or potential that we give
uh our
workers you're going to want to go drive
that productivity Improvement I got to
ask you another question so couple years
ago several years ago now as part of big
years we were just kind of thinking out
of the box and pushing Dell to think
about maybe designing your own Arm based
silicon and you and I have talked about
this and you're like yeah we got
Merchant silicon partners that are going
to do a better job than we will at that
having said that all the cloud players
are now doing their own silicon that
when you talk to them as to why they say
because we need to lower our cost will
the merchant silicon partners that you
have be able to deliver that on a
continuous basis from to to help you
lower your cost to stay competitive
because everybody's talking about hybrid
ai ai on Prem what are what are your
thoughts on that in terms of what are
you seeing from the merchant silicon
vendors and their ability to do Nitro
like stuff or training or or or
inference type silicon well at low cost
in many ways Dave we're entering I think
a new era for the PC that was since it
was a PC question which has
predominantly been
x86 right mhm
not anymore as of yesterday arm just
entered the equation for us with
Qualcomm uh I can't say exactly who's
doing what but there are more arm
processors coming that are targeted into
the design point for the PC so again as
a former designer I'm going I have more
Choice than I've ever had before so I've
been doing this for nearly four decades
and I go let me get this so I can begin
to pick parts
for performance per wat absolute
performance price point mixed
environment and I can find a piece of
silicon for each one of those that are
optimized that sounds like a lot of fun
and do you think comp what has
competition taught us in our industry
yeah lowers cost right it it his at
least if history is any indicator of
what's happening in the future it will
lower absolute cost for our
so this is interesting so your the
argument would be that that optionality
gives you options that you can take
advantage of perhaps vertical
integration may not give it reminds me
of Connor and Seagate some you you
remember this when finest came out it's
like hey we're going to use you know
Merchant heads and media and was able to
get to Market much quicker Al would say
well we're going to vertically integrate
because it's better for margins um
obviously not the perfect example but
for a period of time there in the PC
World that
optionality conferred competitive
Advantage for for quite some time it
created a lot of
value well look what we have around the
windows
platform is an enablement vehicle if you
will that that drives tremendous
Innovation the history of the PC space
has been a rich vibrant ecosystem has
driven Innovation incremental features
over the course of time
and now you're seeing that from a host
CPU with addition now npus these npus
have to be tuned to the OS stack right
so now we're going to see tuning we're
going to see performance Deltas back to
again when we used to do this a long
time ago you could design something that
was faster than someone's someone else's
even if you started from the same
building
block that opportunity to optimize
whether it's your distinct software in
our case what we do or working with
Microsoft and others absolutely
I mean I think this is I don't know what
the right characterization is but it's a
new wave of innovation that's going to
hit the PC that we haven't seen it's
going to be a reason to love your PC
again and and you're going you're going
to get 24-hour battery life but then
you're but then that's not the end of
the story you're going to want more of
that Innovation that's just scratching
the surface well it's going to be one of
the edge devices that brings that power
into a lot more hands which is a very
exciting time for Innovation across the
board for all of us it's still the
world's greatest productiv device and
we're going to make it better it is Jeff
thank you so much for being here with us
today in the middle of what is a very
busy day for you this has been fantastic
my pleasure and insightful Dave thank
you as well and thank all of you for
tuning in wherever you might be enjoying
our delicious 3 days of Deltech week
coverage here live on the cube my name
is Savannah Peterson you're watching the
cube here in Las Vegas Nevada we're the
leading source for Enterprise Tech news
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