Powering Canada's AI future: Inference and the Bell AI Fabric

At Bell, we're committed to driving AI innovation and economic growth across Canada. We're building a future where Canadian businesses can thrive in the age of artificial intelligence. A crucial part of this is ensuring data sovereignty – keeping your data secure and within Canada's borders.  

That's why we're proud to introduce the Bell AI Fabric, a cutting-edge infrastructure designed to empower Canadian businesses with the latest AI technologies. 

The Bell AI Fabric: your gateway to AI success 

The Bell AI Fabric is a comprehensive platform designed to accelerate your AI journey, going beyond a simple cluster of data centers. It provides a secure, high-performance environment for developing, deploying, and scaling your AI initiatives.  

At its core, the Bell AI Fabric offers a nationwide sovereign fabric of purpose-built AI data halls. These dedicated facilities are engineered for high-density AI workloads, delivering performance, efficiency, and scalability tailored to the needs of enterprises, research institutions, and government entities. Each AI data hall provides a standardized 5MW IT capacity, ensuring rapid deployment and consistent reliability. And for additional scalability, multiple halls can be combined within a single facility to accommodate larger workloads.

The infrastructure is also designed to support the intensive power and cooling requirements of advanced AI systems, offering optimal conditions for cutting-edge hardware. This ensures a future-proof infrastructure, eliminating growth constraints often tied to power availability.  

By leveraging the Bell AI Fabric, businesses can: 

• • • Reduce costs: Optimize infrastructure spending by leveraging shared resources and efficient AI processing. 
    • Increase speed to market: Quickly deploy AI solutions with pre-configured environments and streamlined workflows. 
    • Enhance data security: Benefit from the robust security measures and data sovereignty assurances offered by our Canadian-based infrastructure. 
    • Unlock innovation: Access the latest AI technologies and expertise to drive innovation and gain a competitive edge. 

The power behind the fabric: Inference AI 

At the heart of the Bell AI Fabric lies a technology that is transforming the way AI is deployed and utilized: Inference AI. But what exactly is it, and why is it so important? 

Inference is the process of using a trained AI model to make predictions or decisions based on new data. It’s the "doing" part of AI. Think of it this way: you've spent time and resources training a sophisticated AI model to recognize patterns in images. Now, you need that model to analyze thousands of new images quickly and accurately. That's where inference comes in. It's the process of applying the learned knowledge. It allows AI to be applied in practical scenarios such as detecting fraud, personalizing recommendations, or analyzing medical images.  Inference is the engine that powers these applications. 

LPUs vs. GPUs: the key to efficient Inference 

Traditionally, Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have been the workhorses for AI, particularly for training models. However, for inference, GPUs can sometimes be less efficient. That's where LPUs (Learning Processing Units) come in. 

• • • GPUs (Graphics Processing Units): Designed for general-purpose parallel processing, GPUs are powerful but can be less optimized for the specific demands of inference. They consume more power and can be more expensive to operate for inference tasks. 
    • LPUs (Learning Processing Units): These are purpose-built processors specifically designed for AI inference. They are optimized for the types of calculations needed to run trained AI models, resulting in significantly improved performance, lower latency, and greater energy efficiency compared to GPUs for inference workloads. 

By integrating LPUs into the Bell AI Fabric, we're able to provide our customers with a superior AI experience. This translates to: 

• • • Faster insights: Real-time data analysis and decision-making. 
    • Reduced operational costs: Lower energy consumption and optimized infrastructure utilization. 
    • Scalability: The ability to handle increasing data volumes and user demands without compromising performance. 

Bell's commitment to Canada's AI future 

Inference AI, powered by LPUs, is a critical component of the Bell AI Fabric ecosystem. It’s a testament to our commitment to innovation and our belief in the potential of AI to transform Canadian businesses.  

The Bell AI Fabric provides organizations immediate access to purpose-built, secure, and sovereign AI infrastructure, explicitly designed to accelerate the most ambitious AI initiatives. We're not just building infrastructure; we're building a future where Canadian companies lead the way in the AI revolution, powered by secure, reliable, and cutting-edge technology. 

To learn more, check out our recent press release.