UK’s Most Advanced Supercomputer to be Situated in Bristol
14 September 2023
It has been confirmed that a new state-of-the-art supercomputer, which will be one of Europe’s most powerful, is going to be built in Bristol.
The UK Government has decided on the University of Bristol as the most appropriate the location of this AI research resource (AIRR) - which has been given the nomenclature of Isambard-AI (in respect to the celebrated 19th Century West Country inventor and engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel). With £900 million in investment already being allocated to this project, it will serve as a national hub where researchers will be able to carry out essential work in relation to the furtherment of AI technology. The universities of Bath, Cardiff and Exeter will also being involved in the conducted research. Thousands of the latest high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) will be incorporated into Isambard-AI. These will enable the training large language models (LLMs), as well as other activities.
According to Simon McIntosh-Smith, Professor of High-Performance Computing at the University of Bristol; “Isambard-AI will be one of the world’s first, large-scale, open AI supercomputers, and builds on our expertise designing and operating cutting-edge computational facilities.”
