The U.Ok. authorities mentioned Wednesday that it’ll make investments £225 million, or $273 million, into a synthetic intelligence supercomputer, highlighting the nation’s ambition to guide within the know-how because it races to catch as much as the U.S. and China.
The College of Bristol will construct the supercomputer, referred to as Isambard-AI after the nineteenth century British engineer Isambard Brunel. The announcement coincided with the primary day of the U.Ok.’s AI security summit, which is being held in Bletchley Park.
The U.Ok. authorities mentioned Isambard-AI would be the most superior pc in Britain and as soon as full, it will likely be “10 occasions sooner than the U.Ok.’s present quickest machine.” The pc will pack 5,448 GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips, highly effective AI chips made by U.S. semiconductor big Nvidia, which makes a speciality of high-performance computing purposes.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the American IT big, will assist construct the pc, with goals to ultimately join it to a newly introduced Cambridge supercomputer referred to as Daybreak. That pc, constructed by Dell and U.Ok. agency StackPC, might be powered by greater than 1,000 Intel chips that use water-cooling to cut back energy consumption. It’s anticipated to begin operating within the subsequent two months.
The U.Ok. authorities hopes the 2 mixed supercomputers will obtain breakthroughs in fusion power, well being care and local weather modeling.
The machines might be up and operating beginning in summer season 2024, the federal government mentioned, and can assist researchers analyze superior AI fashions to check security options and drive breakthroughs in drug discovery and clear power.
The federal government beforehand earmarked £1 billion to put money into the semiconductor business in an try and safe the nation’s chip provides and scale back its dependence on East Asia for essentially the most commercially essential microchips.