Bristol’s Isambard-AI to be the UK’s fastest supercomputer following £225m investment

The Government has announced a £225m investment to create the Isambard AI, the UK’s most powerful supercomputer, at the University of Bristol.

Isambard-AI will be 10x more powerful than the current fastest supercomputer in the UK, reaching up to 200 quadrillion calculations per second. This capability will allow researchers and industry to make Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven breakthroughs in fields such as robotics, big data, climate research, and drug discovery.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)* will build and deliver the new system with the next generation HPE Cray EX supercomputers and over 5,000 state-of-the-art NVIDIA GH200 superchips.

It’s a huge step forward for the national tech sector, with Bristol appropriately at the heart of the innovation as a city that is already the main driver of emerging technologies.

techSPARK’s Managing Director, Ben Shorrock, comments on the news: “It’s fantastic to hear Bristol has been recognised as the ideal location to create the UK’s fastest supercomputer in, but obviously not a surprising one. Bristol has become a hub for world-leading technology and is consistently at the forefront of driving forward innovation when it comes to deep tech. With so much expertise in our collaborative city, we can’t wait to see what emerges from this new facility.”

The new Bristol facility will be used by a wide range of organisations from across the UK to harness the power of AI.

The funding comes as part of a wider investment injection of £300m to create a new national Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (AIRR) for the country, consolidating the UK’s position as a world leader in AI. 

“Isambard-AI represents a huge leap forward for AI computational power in the UK,” says Professor Simon McIntosh-Smith, Director of the Isambard National Research Facility at the University of Bristol. “Today Isambard-AI would rank within the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world and, when in operation later in 2024, it will be one of the most powerful AI systems for open science anywhere.”

Phase one of the system, available in March 2024, will utilise Isambard 3 – a TOP500-class supercomputer service for AI and high-performance computing (HPC). This is due to be installed at the NCC at the start of 2024 and was developed in collaboration with the GW4 group of universities – an alliance made up of the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter. It will offer early access to UK-based scientists, researchers and developers so their research can get underway as soon as possible.    

Pleased to be partnering with the UK Government and the University of Bristol to be a part of this pivotal news, Justin Hotard, Executive Vice President and General Manager, HPC, AI & Labs at HPE, tells us, “The announcement of the UK’s major investment in AI supercomputing underscores its commitment to taking a global leadership position in AI.

“The Isambard-AI system will harness world-leading supercomputing, including high-performance networking co-developed at HPE’s Bristol labs, to provide the performance and scale required for compute-intensive AI projects,” whilst giving researching access to Europe’s largest AI system for open science.

Ian Buck, vice president of hyperscale and HPC at NVIDIA, adds: “In building one of the world’s fastest AI supercomputers, the UK is demonstrating the importance for nations to create their own infrastructure.”

The Government’s new Frontier AI Taskforce will have priority access to support its work to mitigate the risks posed by the most advanced forms of AI, including national security from the development of bioweapons and cyberattacks. The resource will also support the work of the AI Safety Institute, as it develops a programme of research looking at the safety of frontier AI models and supports government policy with this analysis.

Isambard-AI will also feature sophisticated direct liquid-cooling capabilities as part of the HPE Cray EX supercomputer design to improve energy efficiency and overall carbon footprint impact.

The system will be hosted in a self-cooled, self-contained data center, using the HPE Performance Optimized Data Center (POD), and will be situated at the National Composites Centre (NCC), based at the Bristol and Bath Science Park.

NCC is one of seven research centres across the UK that form the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, helping to turn great ideas into reality by providing access to world-class research and development facilities and expertise that would otherwise be out of reach for many businesses in the UK.

HPE is also collaborating with the University of Bristol on a highly-energy efficient heat re-use model, extracting waste heat from the Isambard-AI system to use as renewable energy to heat local buildings, supporting the Net Zero carbon efficiency targets for 2030/2040 as mandated by the UK Government.

Bristol is one of the top UK universities for AI research and scientific computing. It already plays host to cutting-edge computing technology, including the previously announced Isambard 3 supercomputer, while being home to the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Interactive Artificial Intelligence and the newly announced UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Practice-Oriented Artificial Intelligence.