The UK’s fastest and most powerful supercomputer, located at the University of Bristol, is now officially online, with pioneering technology helping to make the UK a world leader in artificial intelligence.
As it goes live, the multimillion-dollar Isambard-AI has appeared in the global power rankings as the fastest and is now officially the second most sustainable supercomputer in the world, entering the top two of the Green500.
Scientists will soon be able to use world-class equipment for research that has not been possible in the UK until now, with organizations such as the UK’s AI Safety Institute expected to be among the first to harness their capabilities for AI research from Of this month. .
The new Bristol Isambard-AI facility will be used by a wide range of organizations across the UK to harness the power of AI, which is already driving emerging technologies such as training large language models (LLMs), healthcare and robotics. The supercomputer will also play an essential role in critical areas such as AI security, accelerating automated drug discovery and climate research.
Featuring the latest technologies, including HPE Slingshot 11 interconnect and direct liquid cooling solutions with NVIDIA’s highly integrated and heterogeneous CPU-GPU systems, it is one of the most efficient supercomputers ever built.
Bristol’s Isambard-AI phase one also appeared at position 129 in the latest edition of the TOP500 list of high-performance computing (HPC) systems on Earth, as published at the ISC High Performance 2024 event in Hamburg, Germany.
University of Bristol Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Evelyn Welch said: “With phase one of Isambard-AI activated and ready for action later this month, we welcome this huge step forward towards to provide UK researchers with world-class AI and HPC capabilities, until now accessible to few.
“This will equip the UK with the means to drive the next wave of scientific advances and position Bristol as a vital cog in global technological discovery that will improve people’s lives.”
Professor Judith Squires, Dean and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, who joined a government delegation to the Isambard-AI site, said: “The speed with which this project is being delivered is testament to the experience and ambition of our hard-working teams. HPC and AI here at the University.
“The arrival of phase one of Isambard-AI builds on Bristol’s reputation for AI research and training; Home to two AI Doctoral Training Centers, as well as two new national AI research centers, our state-of-the-art capabilities will allow us to push the boundaries of scientific research to make breakthroughs that will benefit everyone.”
Professor Simon McIntosh-Smith, director of the Bristol Supercomputing Center at the University of Bristol, explained: “Assuming there are eight billion people on Earth and they all perform one calculation every second, it would take 2.3 years for all eight billions of people, working 24/7, 365 days a year, to do what the Isambard-AI phase could do in a second.
“That’s an amazing performance even though we can fit it into a relatively small space.
“Phase 1 of Isambard-AI means the start of the Isambard-AI service. When the remaining 5,280 GPUs arrive at the University’s National Composites Center (NCC) in late summer, performance will increase by a factor of 32.”
Following a £225 million investment from the UK government last autumn thanks to HPE modular data center technology; phase one of Isambard-AI with the HPE Cray EX2500 supercomputer and 168 NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper superchips was delivered in record time, signaling the speed at which AI is advancing and recognizing the value of having a national AI research resource in place .
AI Minister Viscount Camrose said: “With the launch of the first phase of the University of Bristol’s Isambard-AI supercomputer, we are witnessing a groundbreaking moment for UK science, innovation and technology. This world-class equipment will revolutionize research possibilities here in the UK, with our first AI Security Institute among the organizations that will benefit from harnessing one of the most powerful computing systems on the planet to power their vital research.
“Not only is Isambard-AI ranked among the world’s fastest supercomputers, it also sets the standard for environmentally conscious computing, leading the charge in terms of efficiency and sustainability. From AI safety to healthcare and climate research, its capabilities are unmatched, highlighting the UK as a global leader in AI and responsible innovation.”
“It’s exciting to see Isambard-AI entering the first stage of its journey to deliver Europe’s largest AI system for open science and propel the UK as a global leader in AI,” said Matt Harris, managing director for UK, Ireland and Middle East. and Africa at HPE. “With AI progressing at a rapid pace, we are proud to have delivered the system in record time, with just 3 months between concept design and system go-live. This unique supercomputer is the centerpiece of the AI research capability. UK government AI and will enable organizations like the AI Safety Institute to train generative AI models at scale, with research results expected as early as May this year.”
Other information
Isambard-AI’s phase one performance is around 7.4 PFLOP/s on TOP500 – meaning the 168 GPUs can perform 7.4×10^15 operations per second, while for AI the performance is even more impressive, with 647 PFLOP/s of 8-bit point float (647×10^15).
The University of Bristol is one of the UK’s top universities for AI research and scientific computing. It is already home to cutting-edge computing technology, with the Isambard 3 supercomputer due to be installed later this summer to support a wide range of scientific research.
The University is also home to two Doctoral Training Centers in AI: the UKRI Center for Doctoral Training in Interactive Artificial Intelligence and the UKRI Center for Doctoral Training in Practice-Oriented Artificial Intelligence; as well as two new national AI research centers: The AI for Collective Intelligence Hub and The Mathematical and Computational Foundations of AI – Informationory for Distribution AI Hub.
The Isambard-AI project is being led by Bristol experts Professor McIntosh-Smith and Dr Sadaf Alam, with their team at the Bristol Center for Supercomputing (BriCS).
The TOP500 list, published twice a year in ISC and SC, provides the most accurate, reliable, and historically consistent ranking of commonly used general-purpose HPC systems for cutting-edge scientific computing applications.
