Red Hat expands AMD partnership to support AI in hybrid cloud

Red Hat and AMD are deepening their work together to improve support for AI workloads and modernise virtualised infrastructure. Their goal is to offer more options for organisations dealing with growing data demands and a mix of applications running across both on-premise and cloud systems.

As AI use grows, so does the need for data centres that can support it. Yet many are still focused on traditional IT workloads, leaving little capacity for AI. To help address this, Red Hat is pairing its open source software with AMD’s processors and GPUs to offer a more balanced, efficient foundation for AI and virtual machines.

A key part of this effort is enabling AMD Instinct GPUs to work with Red Hat OpenShift AI. This gives users access to the compute power needed for AI while keeping resource use in check. Red Hat and AMD also tested the Instinct MI300X GPUs running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI within Microsoft Azure’s ND MI300X v5 VMs. The tests showed that these GPUs could support both small and large language models without the need to split workloads across multiple virtual machines, reducing cost and complexity.

The companies are also active in the upstream vLLM community, a group focused on improving AI inference. By contributing updates like kernel optimisations and communication improvements, Red Hat and AMD aim to make multi-GPU workloads faster and more efficient. This work also includes better support for quantised and dense AI models running on AMD hardware.

As part of this upstream work, AMD Instinct GPUs will support the Red Hat AI Inference Server—a tested, enterprise-ready version of vLLM. Red Hat is working to ensure that customers can run AI models on AMD hardware without needing custom setups. The idea is to give users a reliable way to deploy open source AI models on GPUs that are optimised and validated for this work.

In addition to GPUs, AMD’s EPYC CPUs play a role in hosting GPU-powered systems. These CPUs support strong performance across a wide range of workloads, including AI training and inference, while also helping to improve the return on investment from GPU servers.

Beyond AI, the partnership also supports a change in how businesses manage virtual machines. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, which runs on AMD EPYC processors, helps organisations move VM-based applications to a cloud-native platform. This feature allows IT teams to manage both VMs and containers from a single environment—whether they’re deployed in a data centre or across public cloud platforms.

This setup can improve infrastructure use and reduce overhead. OpenShift Virtualization supports deployment on major server brands, including Dell, HPE, and Lenovo. It’s designed to help companies simplify legacy infrastructure, reduce total costs, and make room for newer workloads like AI.

By making it easier to run VMs and AI workloads on the same infrastructure, Red Hat and AMD are working to help businesses make better use of their existing systems while preparing for future demands.

Ashesh Badani, senior vice president and chief product officer at Red Hat, said, “Fully realising the benefits of AI means that organisations must have the choice and flexibility to optimise their IT footprint for the rigours of scaling demand. Our extended collaboration with AMD expands the spectrum of options for organisations seeking to ready their IT environments for an ever-evolving future, from modernising existing investments on a high-performing CPU architecture and virtualisation platform to preparing for production AI with next-generation hardware accelerators and open source AI technologies.”

Philip Guido, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at AMD, said, “As enterprise customer workloads grow more diverse and demanding, they require solutions that can scale. By combining Red Hat’s industry-leading open source platforms with world-class AMD Instinct GPUs and AMD EPYC CPUs, we’re delivering the performance and efficiency customers demand to accelerate AI, virtualisation and hybrid-cloud innovation.”

(Photo by Unsplash)

See also: Red Hat boosts enterprise AI across the hybrid cloud with Red Hat AI

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