The computer is officially the most sustainable supercomputer in the UK
The UK’s fastest and most powerful supercomputer, known as Isambard-AI, has been switched on at the University of Bristol this week.
The Isambard-AI supercomputer was first announced by the government last March alongside a £225 million investment. The facility has been built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and contains over 5,000 NVIDIA superchips, allowing it to complete 200 quadrillion calculations per second.
Officially named the AI Research Resource (AIRR), the facility is ten times more powerful than the previous leading supercomputer in the UK. Researchers will use the facility to support critical work on the development of AI technology, working closely alongside the UK’s AI Safety Institute.
The facility includes thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) and will be used to train the large language models. as Additional focus areas include climate research and accelerating automated drug discovery.
