Texas A&M research agency builds a secure AI platform in Dallas customer story
Secure AI infrastructure for complex federal research at scale
Federal research keeps getting harder to run. Programs in defense, aerospace, materials discovery, robotics and large language model development each arrive with their own data governance and security requirements, and the infrastructure behind them has become as strategic as the research itself.
The Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) is the official research agency for Texas A&M Engineering and is pivotal in advancing interdisciplinary research across The Texas A&M University System. To take on more of that work, TEES selected Dell Technologies to design and build the Innovative Growth in Next Generation AI Technology Ecosystem (IGNITE), a new AI and HPC platform funded by the State of Texas. Dell will deploy the integrated systems in a Texas-based Equinix data center in Dallas.
The future of research depends on providing researchers and students with access to the right technologies, the right expertise and the freedom to innovate. Through collaboration with industry leaders such as Dell Technologies, AMD and Equinix, we are building a flexible and scalable platform that accelerates discovery, strengthens workforce development and creates new opportunities for partnership across academia, government and industry.
Dr. Vince Kellen Chief Information Officer, The Texas A&M University System
One environment, many security requirements
Priority research areas at TEES include mission-critical AI model and LLM development, materials discovery, advanced manufacturing, robotics and defense- and aerospace-related research. Requirements for data governance and security vary by program and sponsor, which has traditionally meant separate, siloed environments and duplicated cost.
IGNITE takes a different approach. Dell AI Services experts worked with TEES throughout planning and design to align the architecture to both research priorities and security requirements. The result is a shared infrastructure model governed by policy-based, zero trust security controls, so researchers, students and external collaborators can work across projects with different security profiles in one environment.
Built to scale with research demand
IGNITE will feature Dell PowerRack systems with liquid-cooled Dell PowerEdge XE9785L servers and AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs to accelerate AI training, inference, HPC and other data-intensive workloads. Dell AI Data Platform storage (Dell PowerScale) anchors the data foundation with high-performance data access and management for large-scale research environments, while Dell Managed Services supports ongoing operations as demand grows.
Dell will deploy the integrated systems in an Equinix data center in Dallas, where TEES gains a secure, resilient foundation and access to a dense partner and network ecosystem for the collaborators its programs depend on. IGNITE is designed to scale alongside growing research demands and is expected to be among the largest AI deployments in higher education powered by AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs.
Modern research environments generate and depend on massive volumes of data, requiring secure, sovereign and scalable infrastructure that can support advanced computing workloads. Through our collaboration with Dell Technologies, Equinix will provide the resilient connectivity, ecosystem and secure data center foundation needed to support IGNITE’s growth, helping enable groundbreaking research and innovation across industry, government and academic communities.
Kevin Thames Vice President, Americas Partner Ecosystem, Equinix
Extending a foundation for secure research innovation
IGNITE builds on a long-standing Dell relationship with the Texas A&M University System and on Equinix data center capacity in Dallas. Together they give TEES a secure, well-connected foundation to compete for the next generation of federal and state research programs, without limiting researcher access.
