What is Dell AI Data Platform?#

Dell AI Data Platform (AIDP) is a fully-integrated data lakehouse deployed on Dell hardware and supported by a full software suite including Dell Data Analytics Engine, powered by Starburst Enterprise platform (SEP) and Dell Data Processing Engine (DDPE), powered by Apache Spark.

Overview#

AIDP consolidates analytics across databases, object storage, and warehouses with minimal data movement. It uses Dell Data Analytics Engine for high-performance queries and Dell Data Processing Engine (Apache Spark) for batch ETL, ML, and GPU-accelerated workloads.

Key capabilities#

Some key capabilities of AIDP include:

  • Unified query layer over object storage, databases, and warehouses

  • High-performance SQL with Dell Data Analytics Engine

  • Batch ETL, ML, and Spark RAPIDS GPU accelerated workloads with Dell Data Processing Engine

  • Built-in governance and access control

  • Data product creation for frequently used assets providing a single point of access to your data

  • Flexible scaling and workload isolation via resource pools

Dell Data Analytics Engine#

Dell Data Analytics Engine, powered by Starburst Enterprise platform (SEP) provides fast, federated SQL over databases, warehouses, and object storage with minimal data movement.

See What is Starburst Enterprise? for more details about SEP and the supported features.

Dell Data Processing Engine#

Dell Data Processing Engine provides batch ETL, machine learning, and GPU‑accelerated workloads. It supports configurable resource pools for isolation and scalable performance, job submission via UI or CLI, and integration with access control and object storage governance.

See the following documentation pages for more details:

When to use Trino vs Spark#

Spark and Trino are both powerful engines, but their strengths differ. Some workloads are better suited to one than the other. The table below maps common tasks to the appropriate engine:

Scenario

Trino (DDAE)

Spark (DDPE)

High concurrency, low-latency analytics

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Large batch processing

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Lightweight transformations (CREATE TABLE AS, INSERT)

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GPU-accelerated workloads

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Machine learning

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Ad-hoc SQL queries

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