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>> Welcome back to theCUBE, everyone.
The leader in LIVE tech coverage
coming to you live from Las Vegas.
It's HPE Discover 2023, day one of theCUBE's coverage.
Lisa Martin and Dave Vellante.
We had a great morning, Dave, with Antonio Neri's keynote.
We knew we were going to hear a lot about AI.
We're going to be talking
with one of our alumni next from Intel.
Going to be talking about how customers
can make AI deployments successful.
It's a big challenge.
>> Yeah, AI is in the news, Intel's in the news.
Guys are building factories all over the world.
And it's great to see
the public-private partnership kicking in.
It's great for the country.
So, welcome to theCUBE.
It's great to see. >> It is.
And Greg Ernst is here.
Corporate Vice President at Intel,
Sales and Marketing and GM America Sales Intel.
Greg, welcome back. Great to have you.
>> My pleasure. Thank you.
>> So, talk a little bit about HPE and Intel
have been partners for quite a long time.
Since we're here at HPE event,
give us a little bit of context, give the audience-
>> Greg: Yeah.
>> Some really kind of the status of the partnership.
>> Yeah, no. That's great.
Intel and HPE, we've been working 30 years together.
They're one of our absolute leading customers,
partners, go-to market.
We have a 360-degree relationship.
We rely on them heavily to really take
our great semiconductor products and put systems solutions
around it to make the technology accessible.
So, whether it's government agencies,
cloud companies, telcos, enterprises,
it's partners like HPE that Intel really needs,
that extracts the value of that compute power and brings it.
And I've had a great relationship with HPE.
A few years of my career, actually four years
I led our HPE Account Team.
>> Lisa: Ah okay.
>> So, I got to lead the team when HP split
into HPE and HPI.
>> AI, hot topic.
>> Greg: Yeah.
>> The hottest topic.
One of the hottest topics on the planet.
Everyone's talking about generative AI
and all these great sorts of things.
What are some of the challenges
that you're seeing the companies have?
Because we hear leaders say
and Antonio said something similar this morning,.
Like, if you're not already invested in AI
or working with it, you're already behind.
What are some of the challenges customers
are coming to Intel saying, help us-
>> Yeah, yeah. >> Resolve this
so we can actually become leading edge here.
>> I think most, well in the generative AI space,
I think it's emerging.
So, if companies don't have a plan, don't have a strategy,
they're actually, I would say more in the norm.
But clearly that's where the world's going.
This is a dynamic thing
and Antonio made bold claims today
about it being the the biggest thing in a generation,
and I could see that.
But most companies I talked to, they're in this phase now
of understanding what data they have,
putting it in a searchable format, organizing the data.
They're starting now
working through algorithms and what use cases.
They're hiring.
And that's a big thing right now
is the skills and the labor.
And Intel's happy to advise on all those.
One area that obviously what we're strongest with
is then the actual compute infrastructure
which can be complex.
It can be a large investment.
And at a time right now where there's still
some economic uncertainty for enterprises
making that capital outlay and whether it's on-prem,
cloud, whether they build their own,
there's a lot of big decisions that they have to make.
>> And you guys have been, I mean, correct me I'm wrong.
You've been shipping AI technologies for a long time.
>> Oh yeah. >> I don't know
what the history of it is.
It's like AI is everywhere.
But maybe you could help our audiences
sort of understand Intel's strategy with respect to AI.
>> Yeah.
Well for us, we've got,
and right now generative AI's got all the buzz.
>> Dave: Yeah. >> Right?
But for us, it's to your point,
AI has been integrated in software for years now.
We've got a, Intel's got a big, big play
around video, image AI.
We have a whole software suite of tools
that we call that's OpenVINO, open-source base.
It allows companies to train their video use cases.
It's great for edge, right?
Retail, manufacturing, hospitality, they have it deployed.
So, there's that class
and then there's another class that's emerging,
but tier 2, which is AI use cases on the PC.
So, early during COVID, we spent a lot of time
on video conferencing and the editing out of the background,
being able to track the pupil of the eyes even if you look.
All that's AI-driven.
And then, then there's this newer space
around generative AI that's exploded
in the large language modeling.
And that's what everyone's talking about these days.
>> Which is really that's where the GPU comes in, right?
And again, you've been shipping GPUs, right?
>> Yeah. >> I mean,
that's something that you've been-
>> Yeah, we've- >> For a while.
>> We've got a GPU class called GPU Max.
Argonne National Labs actually deployed
an exascale cluster with us funded in partnership
with Department of Energy that uses six GPUs per cluster.
And then, one thing that we've brought in now
is really taking that same compute technology,
which Matrix Math is that's what's great for,
excels on AI is Matrix Math.
And we've actually onboarded accelerators
built into just our high volume Xeons.
And customers are seeing 10x improvement
versus the previous gen on PyTorch, TensorFlow,
some of these models.
So for us, that's one thing that we see.
It's GPUs got a lot of buzz,
but for us we just see there's a lot of benefit
of taking the same accelerators,
putting it in the high purpose CPUs.
That way customers can offload
some of those AI compute tasks
to the dedicated advanced matrix extensions
while still using the CPU to run everything else.
>> And is there a sustainability angle there?
'Cause we'd mentioned AI is super hot, so is sustainable IT.
>> Oh yeah. >> How is Intel and HPE
helping customers achieve that?
Because every customer these days has a requirement
to be net zero or carbon neutral by a certain year.
>> Right.
Yeah, they're almost opposing, right?
You got this insatiable demand for compute,
but at the same time, we have an incredible responsibility
to reduce our carbon footprint.
So, you have these two counterbalances.
And that's where Intel's one of the few CPU companies
on Earth that we design the products and we manufacture.
And so for us, the first big thing that we want to do
is environmentally friendly in all the markets
where we manufacture, and we're around the world,
we continue to expand there.
93% of our products now
are actually built using reusable energy.
So, 93%.
We've actually achieved positive water reuse.
So, between the water that we recycle
plus the reclamation projects,
we actually return more water
to the Earth's surface than we take out.
And so for us, that's a big part.
But then as we said we design the products as well
for power optimizations.
That's one of the reasons why we believe
these integrated accelerators are key because that'll help,
again, reduce the compute power required to run these tasks.
So for us, it's the build the products, which is scope one
and then also help our customers run 'em
which is scope two and scope three.
>> Yeah. >> So, the world
used to be so simple, right?
You had chips for PCs, you had chips
for enterprise. >> Yeah.
>> And they run on SAP and some Microsoft workloads,
a little bit of Oracle database.
Okay, great. Done. >> Yeah.
>> That has changed, right?
>> Yeah. >> So, how has that
affected how you go to market?
>> Well, for us, I mean, I love it.
So, I'm a electrical engineer by trade.
And for 20 years of my career,
no one really was concerned about compute
or wanted to know all the details underneath.
So for me, this is, it's fun.
All of a sudden now, computing, GPUs,
CPUs, it's all the rage.
And more and more,
we get to like spin our propellers and get deep.
So, for us it's great now.
Going to market though, what's been exciting is just,
and even over the last eight months,
just the explosion of the number of companies in this space
from the software vendors to AI as a Service companies.
Antonio announced right there
in the large language model in public cloud.
So, just the new partnerships is exciting.
But I think for enterprises it could be overwhelming.
>> Lisa: Yeah.
>> Of where to make, again, where to make the bets?
And that's where I'm spending a lot of my time personally,
is help digesting all this.
And that's the role you all play.
>> Well, you think about it,
everybody wanted to get remote work, right?
>> Greg: Yeah. >> Nobody did.
>> Yeah.
>> And then everybody wanted to get digital, right?
And then, just as they thought
they had their hands around that
you get these weird macro trends going on.
And now it's like everybody's trying to get AI, right?
>> Lisa: Yeah. >> There's a lot
of uncertainty out there.
What do you, how do you see the future of this playing out?
I mean, you've seen waves before.
>> I think the next, I think this is where honestly,
a lot of these AI as a Service companies can really help
because what they'll do is they'll help companies advise.
And the companies, if I were them,
I would try multiple things.
Don't before going in big deep on one approach.
So, I actually see all these companies exploding
as a great thing because especially again,
as we said earlier, we still have some uncertain times
>> Lisa: Yeah. >> In the markets, right?
And so, and future earnings, some companies are still uneasy
what their future earnings look like.
So making, staging some of these investments,
I think is the right approach.
And then learning from the great innovation.
So, that's the approach I recommend.
>> In the last few years,
how have your customer conversations evolved?
Where customers are talking about chips but also AI-
>> Greg: Yeah. >> Sustainability.
Needing to really be able to make a big impact.
To not just survive the last couple of years,
but thrive and be competitive.
How have you seen customer conversations change
between levels and priorities-
>> Greg: Yeah. >> And boards?
>> I'd say, and we were talking earlier.
Responding to COVID was one.
Building hybrid cloud strategies kind of before that.
To me, probably top thing now that's emerged,
I mean we talked about AI, but it's to me,
it's the sustainability and the commitments
that a lot of companies have around sustainability
and they recognize
their compute footprint's a big part of it.
And so that's, and that's exciting for me 'cause Intel,
one of our great founders, Gordon Moore,
most people, a lot of people don't realize
he was an environmentalist first, right?
And so, and charity, after he was done working was
regenerating natural spaces and protecting natural spaces.
So, it's in our DNA. >> Lisa: Yeah.
>> And frankly, I feel like it was underappreciated
by the world of just...
There's an environmentally friendly way
to build semiconductor companies in manufacturing.
And it takes purpose.
It does take investment and it's got to be part of the DNA.
So for me, it's been great.
We publish every year too
our sustainability report.
It's got targets, it's got progress.
We hold ourselves accountable.
It's just like our annual report.
>> And are your customers coming to you saying,
"Hey, Intel, show us this
because if we want to come be with an RFP,
we have a requirement within our own organization
to be net zero by X year."
>> Greg: Yeah. >> "And we need help
with our compute power from partners like Intel
to achieve it."
>> Yeah, I think reusable energy,
reducing the carbon footprint or eliminate greenhouse gas
are the two big ones.
That thing that as an industry we still have work to do,
which is really creating a repeatable way to measure this
and what is the correct way to measure it.
And it's one of the things that Intel
being standards driven company for years,
to me, we've got a big responsibility
of help build those standards so that companies
have a repeatable measure way to do it.
And when they make these claims,
they know what they're signing up for.
And then, frankly they can hold themselves accountable.
>> The accountability is key.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
And I think that all of them, it's just, it's...
They want to feel that too, right?
>> Lisa: Yeah, yeah. >> It's not just
that other people are going to hold them accountable.
It's like, they want to make commitments and meet 'em, right?
>> Yep.
>> Speaking of Intel founders, I wrote a piece,
it was during COVID, early part of COVID breaking analysis.
Pat Gelsinger has to channel
his best Andy Grove to recreate Intel.
So, he's been at it, no doubt.
How has Pat's presence at Intel
sort of affected the culture?
You know, back to its roots?
He's an incredibly focused individual.
>> Right.
>> We see him, you know, he's out there.
He's talking to governments, he's talking to the audience,
he's talking to leaders.
How has it changed?
You know, noticeable? I'm sure it is.
But what of- >> Yeah.
>> What can you tell us about the,
what's going on inside?
>> Well, Pat's a force of nature.
>> Yeah, no doubt.
>> He's my boss's boss.
Every morning he's up at 3:55 am.
>> Lisa: Wow.
>> Responds to emails for five minutes
and then goes and works out.
So, I always wake up to five minutes of emails.
But look, I love working for Pat.
And our customers love it too.
We've been on a journey really to bring back our technology,
innovation, excellence since Pat's joined.
We talk a lot at our company.
There's something called Five Nodes in Four Years
which means five manufacturing,
semiconductor manufacturing transitions
in the next four years.
Good news is two of them are already done.
So, since Pat came, we said five in four years,
two are done, the last three are in track.
And for us, that's really like our mega OKR
that keeps us on track to Moore's Law.
So that, that has been a focus.
And then the other big thing that we were talking
about when I walked up here is
Pat's brought just an incredible accountability for us
to create that global sustainable, resilient supply chain
for semiconductors.
We're trying to move half the world's semiconductors
to the western hemisphere.
So, Europe and the Americas.
Today, it's 80% is done in Taiwan.
And just given all the geopolitical tensions,
that could be riskier.
And so we've, Pat's brought that
and then the other thing Pat's brought is as part of that
we're willing to open our factories up
for any semiconductor company and be their foundry partner.
And traditionally that wasn't the case.
But with Pat's leadership is like, hey, not only
should we build the factories, we need to open it up
for the rest of the ecosystem to build.
And so for me, those are the big three things, right?
Five nodes in four years.
Build out the semiconductors supply chain.
And then, becoming a foundry company in a big way.
>> And as well if, correct me if I'm wrong,
but your designers also have choice
in terms of where things are manufactured, correct?
Is that correct? >> As far as which site?
Yeah >> Yeah, which site and even,
aren't you even tapping some other foundries
or is that not, am I mistaken on that?
>> Well, we had-
>> Dave: Hotels and all.
>> Yeah, we've announced some acquisitions
that we're still working through
all the regulatory authorities to close.
But that would bring some additional IP
purpose-built for things like public sector,
things like automotive exactly.
>> Yeah, so like I said at the top.
It's great for the country.
It's great for, I think the balance of geopolitical balance
and- >> Greg: Yeah.
>> You know, we need a strong Intel
and it's a challenging business.
Expensive business, right?
And so, you know, the other thing Pat's done
is he's done a good job convincing different governments
to help out and put up some dough, so.
>> The momentum sounds great.
It sounds like there's a really good mix
of some of the original Intel DNA that you talked about
along with cultural shift, which is what so many
storied institutions aim to achieve.
Greg- >> Greg: Yeah.
>> We thank you so much for stopping by and sharing with us
what's new with Intel, your partnership with HPE
and some of the things, industry trends,
and customer opportunities that excite you most.
You have to come back.
>> Well, thank you.
Thanks for everything the two of you do.
>> Dave: Thank you. Appreciate it.
>> Lisa: Our pleasure. >> All right. We appreciate it.
>> For our guest and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin.
You're watching theCUBE, the leader in LIVE tech coverage.
And up next, two CUBE alumni from VMware and HPE
join us to talk about HPE GreenLake
with VMware partnerships, opportunities and more.
Stick around. We'll see you in a minute.
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