Azure announces new AI optimized VM series featuring AMD’s flagship MI300X GPU
In our relentless pursuit of pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence, we understand that cutting-edge infrastructure and expertise is needed to harness the full potential of advanced AI. At Microsoft, we've amassed a decade of experience in supercomputing and have consistently supported the most demanding AI training and generative inferencing workloads. Today, we're excited to announce the latest milestone in our journey. We’ve created a virtual machine (VM) with an unprecedented 1.5 TB of high bandwidth memory (HBM) that leverages the power of AMD’s flagship MI300X GPU. Our Azure VMs powered with the MI300X GPU give customers even more choices for AI optimized VMs.
HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING (HPC): OIL AND GAS IN AZURE
The goal of this blog is to share our experiences running key Oil and Gas workloads in Azure. We have worked with multiple customers running these workloads successfully in Azure. We now have a great potential for using the cloud in the Oil and Gas industry, to optimize the business workflows that were previously limited by capacity and older hardware.Microsoft at NVIDIA GTC 2026
Microsoft returns to NVIDIA GTC 2026 in San Jose with a strong presence across conference sessions, in‑booth theater talks, live demos, and executive‑level ancillary events. Together with NVIDIA and our partner ecosystem, Microsoft is showcasing how Azure AI infrastructure enables AI training, inference, and production at global scale. Visit us at Booth #521 to see the latest innovations in action and connect with Azure and NVIDIA experts. Exclusive GTC Experiences LEGO® Datacenter Model Explore Azure AI infrastructure at the Park Container. Candy Lounge Visit the high-traffic candy wall for co-branded treats all day long. Networking Lounge Relax and recharge with comfy seating and vital charging options. Outdoor Juice Truck Free, refreshing beverages served during outdoor park hours. Sponsored Breakout Sessions Microsoft Featured Reinventing Semiconductor Design with Microsoft Discovery S82398 · Mon, Mar 16 · 4:00 PM Prashant Varshney Microsoft · Semiconductor & AI Engineering Abstract: Semiconductor teams face exploding design complexity and shrinking verification windows. This session shows how the Microsoft Discovery AI for Science platform, combined with Synopsys Agent Engineers, introduces an agentic approach to EDA that automates routine steps and accelerates expert decision-making on Azure. Microsoft Featured Operationalizing Agentic AI at Hyperscale S82399 · Tue, Mar 17 · 1:00 PM Nitin Nagarkatte Microsoft · Azure AI Infrastructure Anand Raman Microsoft · Azure AI Vipul Modi Microsoft · AI Systems Abstract: As enterprises move to agentic systems, the challenge shifts to operating intelligent agents reliably at scale. This session demonstrates how Microsoft builds AI Factories on Azure using NVIDIA technology and explores Microsoft Foundry as the control plane for deploying and operating coordinated AI agents. Live from GTC: AI Podcast Dayan Rodriguez Corporate Vice President Global Manufacturing and Mobility Alistair Spiers General Manager Azure Infrastructure Live Special Feature A conversation with Microsoft Azure Listen & Subscribe: aka.ms/GTC2026Podcast Scan to Listen Earned Conference Sessions Don't miss these high-impact sessions where Microsoft and NVIDIA leaders discuss the future of AI factories and infrastructure. Mon · Mar 16 5:00 PM Drive Optimal Tokens per Watt on AI Infrastructure Using Benchmarking Recipes Speakers: Paul Edwards, Emily Potyraj Microsoft, NVIDIA Tue · Mar 17 9:00 AM Autonomous AI Factories: Technical Preview of Agent-Native Production Speakers: JP Vasseur, César Martinez Spessot NVIDIA, Microsoft Research Tue · Mar 17 4:00 PM The Road to Intelligent Mobility: Vehicle GenAI Speakers: Raj Paul, Thomas Evans, Bryan Goodman Microsoft, NVIDIA, Bosch Wed · Mar 18 9:00 AM Supercharging AI with Multi-Gigawatt AI Factories Speakers: Gilad Shainer, Peter Salanki, Evan Burness NVIDIA, CoreWeave, Meta, Microsoft Daily Booth Theater Schedule Visit the Microsoft Theater for lightning talks from engineering leaders and partners. Monday, March 16 2:00 PM BTH208 · NVIDIA Accelerate AI Innovation on Azure with NVIDIA Run:ai — Rob Magno 2:30 PM BTH202 · General Robotics Models to Machines: Deploying Agentic AI in Real-World Robotics — Dinesh Narayanan 3:00 PM BTH200 · Fractal Analytics From Generalist to Enterprise-Ready: Fractal Builds Domain AI — C. Chaudhuri 3:30 PM BTH109 · Microsoft Agentic cloud ops - Smarter Operations with Azure Copilot — Jyoti Sharma 4:00 PM BTH103 · Microsoft Build a Deep Research Agent for Enterprise Data — D. Casati, A. Slutsky, H. Alkemade 4:30 PM BTH205 · NetApp Azure NetApp Files: Powering Your Data for AI Capabilities — Andy Chan 5:00 PM BTH207 · NVIDIA The Agentic Commerce Stack: Open Models on Azure — Antonio Martinez 5:30 PM BTH217 · OPAQUE Confidential AI on Azure Unlocks Sovereign AI at Scale — Aaron Fulkerson 6:00 PM BTH218 · Simplismart Making BYOC work at scale with modular inference — Amritanshu Jain 6:30 PM Expo Reception Tuesday, March 17 1:30 PM BTH100 · Microsoft From Open Weights to Enterprise Scale: Open-Source Models — Sharmila Chockalingam 2:00 PM BTH212 · Personal AI Unlocking the power of memory in Teams with Personal AI — Sam Harkness 2:30 PM BTH111 · Microsoft / NVIDIA Scalable LLM Inference on AKS Using NVIDIA Dynamo — Mohamad Al jazaery, Anton Slutsky 3:00 PM BTH204 · Mistral AI Innovate with Mistral AI on Microsoft Foundry — Ian Mathew 3:30 PM BTH104 · Microsoft GPU-Accelerated CFD at Scale: Star-CCM+ on Azure — Jason Scheffelmaer 4:00 PM BTH206 · NeuBird AI Agentic AI for Incident Response on Microsoft Azure — Grant Griffiths 4:30 PM BTH101 · GitHub Agentic DevOps: Evolving software with GitHub Copilot — Glenn Wester 5:00 PM BTH209 · Rescale Real-World AI Physics: GM & NVIDIA on Rescale — Dinal Perera 5:30 PM BTH107 · Microsoft Intro to LoRA Fine-Tuning on Azure — Christin Pohl 6:30 PM Raffle Wednesday, March 18 1:00 PM BTH219 · VAST Data Scaling AI Infrastructure on Azure with VAST Data — Jason Vallery 1:30 PM BTH110 · Microsoft Physical AI and Robotics: The Next Frontier — F. Miller, C. Souche, D. Narayanan 2:00 PM BTH105 · Microsoft Sovereign AI options with Azure Local — Kim Lam 2:30 PM BTH108 · Microsoft Automating HPC Workflows with Copilot Agents — Param Shah 3:00 PM BTH102 · Microsoft Trustworthy Multi-Agent Workflows with Microsoft Foundry — Brian Benz 4:00 PM BTH106 · Microsoft Scaling Enterprise AI on ARO with NVIDIA H100 & H200 — Lachie Evenson 4:30 PM BTH211 · WEKA Hybrid AI Data Orchestration with WEKA NeuralMesh™ — Desiree Campbell 5:00 PM BTH202 · Hammerspace NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software with NIM — Mike Bloom 5:30 PM BTH203 · Kinaxis Reimagining Global Supply Planning with Azure — Dane Henshall 6:00 PM BTH214 · AT&T Connected AI on Azure for Manufacturing — Brad Pritchett 6:30 PM Raffle Thursday, March 19 11:00 AM BTH210 · Wandelbots Physical AI: Powering Software-Defined Automation in Robotics — Marwin Kunz, Martin George 11:30 AM Raffle Explore Our Demo Pods Visit the Microsoft booth to see our technology in action with live demonstrations across four dedicated pod areas. POD 1 Azure AI Infrastructure End‑to‑end AI infrastructure for training and inference at scale, featuring the latest NVIDIA GPU integrations on Azure. POD 2 Microsoft Foundry Our comprehensive platform for building, deploying, and operating agentic AI systems with enterprise reliability. POD 3 Building AI Together Showcasing joint Microsoft and NVIDIA solutions across diverse industries, from manufacturing to retail. POD 4 Startups Powering AI Discover how innovative startups are running next‑generation AI workloads on the Azure platform. Ancillary Events & Networking Join Microsoft leadership and our partner ecosystem at these curated networking experiences. Click the location to view on Bing Maps. Sun · Mar 15 6:00 PM Microsoft for Startups Executive Leadership Dinner 📍 Morton’s Steakhouse, San Jose Exclusive gathering for startup leaders and Microsoft executives. Mon · Mar 16 1:30 PM Microsoft × NVIDIA Open Meet 📍 Signia by Hilton · International Suite Strategic alignment session for Microsoft and NVIDIA executives. Mon · Mar 16 7:30 PM Microsoft + NVIDIA Executive Dinner 📍 Il Fornaio, San Jose Executive dinner for key customers and leadership teams. Tue · Mar 17 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM Microsoft AI Luncheon: Research, Robotics, & Real‑World AI 📍 Signia by Hilton · International Suite Invite-only: A curated executive lunch exploring the journey from AI research to physical enterprise deployments in robotics and manufacturing. Tue · Mar 17 7:30 PM Networking in AI & Tech 📍 San Pedro Square Market Community networking mixer for Microsoft teams, partners, and customers. Wed · Mar 18 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM AI Innovator’s Circle Brunch: Powering Intelligent Systems Across the Ecosystem 📍 Il Fornaio, San Jose Hosted by Microsoft & NVIDIA at GTC. Join us for an exclusive brunch and discussion on the intelligent ecosystem.
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP (CVO) for Azure – EDA Benchmark and Best Practices
This article provides benchmark reference and architectural guidance to customers who are considering migration of their Electronic Design Automation (EDA) workload to Azure, using CVO as the NFS solution. Furthermore, it provides guidance on where and how to best deploy CVO for EDA workloads. This article focuses on benchmark performance and does not address CVO setup or configuration.
Performance considerations for large scale deep learning training on Azure NDv4 (A100) series
Modern DL training jobs require large Clusters of multi-GPUs with high floating-point performance connected with high bandwidth, low latency networks. The Azure NDv4 VM series is designed specifically for these types of workloads. We will be focusing on HPC+AI Clusters built with the ND96asr_v4 virtual machine type and providing specific optimization recommendations to get the best performance.
Introducing Azure NC H100 v5 VMs for mid-range AI and HPC workloads
Today at Ignite, Microsoft is announcing the public preview of the NC H100 v5 Virtual Machine Series, the latest addition to our portfolio of purpose-built infrastructure for High Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads.
We'll see you at NVIDIA's Spring GTC Conference
As businesses and technology change rapidly, the complexity of the workloads has dramatically expanded, leading to an ever-increasing need for more power. Many of these workloads require the ability to both scale up and scale out their infrastructure to meet more complex needs and manage ambiguity. To solve your most complex and innovative workloads, Azure has the infrastructure you need with the power of the world’s largest supercomputer, the versatility of the cloud, and the security you expect.Announcing Azure HBv5 Virtual Machines: A Breakthrough in Memory Bandwidth for HPC
Discover the new Azure HBv5 Virtual Machines, unveiled at Microsoft Ignite, designed for high-performance computing applications. With up to 7 TB/s of memory bandwidth and custom 4th Generation EPYC processors, these VMs are optimized for the most memory-intensive HPC workloads. Sign up for the preview starting in the first half of 2025 and see them in action at Supercomputing 2024 in Atlanta
