It’s big news for Bristol’s artificial intelligence (AI) scene today as the Isambard-AI officially goes live. Located at the University of Bristol, not only is the supercomputer hailed the most powerful in the UK, but it has also been named the greenest.
The multimillion-pound supercomputer immediately shot to second place globally in the ISC’s Green500 list, a monumental outcome for the UK’s reputation as a world leader in AI and sustainable tech alike.
“If everyone on earth performed one calculation per second, it would take 2.3 years for all eight billion people, working 24/7, 365-days a year, to do what Isambard-AI could do in one second”
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has built and delivered the new system with next-generation HPE Cray EX supercomputers and over 5,000 state-of-the-art NVIDIA GH200 Superchips. The Isambard-AI phase one has been delivered in record time, illustrating how rapidly this technology is advancing. The supercomputer is set to push the boundaries of scientific discovery thanks to its extraordinary computing power.
10x more powerful than the previous fastest national supercomputer, Bristol’s Isambard-AI phase one has also appeared at position 128 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.
A new realm of innovation
The official launch of Isambard-AI means scientists will soon be utilising the world-class equipment to conduct research that is currently not possible to do in the UK. Although hosted in Bristol, this is very much a national project, with the brightest minds in the country planning to take advantage of this pioneering resource.
“Not only does Isambard-AI rank among the world’s fastest supercomputers, but it also sets the standard for eco-conscious computing”
Armed with the latest technologies, including HPE Slingshot 11 interconnect and direct liquid cooling solutions with highly-integrated, heterogeneous CPU-GPU systems from NVIDIA, it is one of the most efficient supercomputers that has ever been built.
To understand just how powerful this computer is, Professor Simon McIntosh-Smith, Director of the Bristol Centre for Supercomputing at the University of Bristol, paints a picture for us: “Assuming there are eight billion people on earth, and everyone performed one calculation per second, it would take 2.3 years for all eight billion people, working 24/7, 365-days a year, to do what Isambard-AI phase one could do in one second. That’s a pretty astounding performance.”
Isambard-AI phase one’s performance is around 7.4 PFLOP/s on the TOP500 – meaning the 168 GPUs can perform 7.4×10^15 operations per second, while for AI the performance is even more impressive, at 647 PFLOP/s of 8-bit floating point (647×10^15).
Minister for AI Viscount Camrose, says, “Not only does Isambard-AI rank among the world’s fastest supercomputers, but it also sets the standard for eco-conscious computing, leading the charge in efficiency and sustainability. From AI safety to healthcare and climate research, its capabilities are unparalleled, marking the UK out as a global leader in AI and responsible innovation.”
Learn more about how Bristol and Bath is paving the way in AI innovation here.
