The UK’s most powerful AI Supercomputer, Dawn, is now online
The UK has just turned on its most powerful AI Supercomputer, and more are coming
In November 2023, the UK hosted the world’s first “AI Safety Summit”, where the government announced that they planned to make British AI Supercomputing 30x more powerful. This boost in the nation’s AI performance comes from the new Dawn Supercomputer, and another supercomputing system called Isambard.
The Dawn Supercomputer has now been turned on in Cambridge University. The system’s powered by over 500 Intel Xeon CPUs and over a thousand Intel Data Center GPU Max series accelerators. Dell and Intel collaborated to create the Dawn Supercomputer for Cambridge Open Zettascale Lab.
UKAEA (UK Atomic Energy Authority) scientists and engineers plans to use Dawn to design the UK’s prototype nuclear fusion power plant. The system will also investigate personalised medicine and to find solutions for climate change.
This summer, Dawn’s brother system, Isambard, will be switched on at the University of Bristol. Isambard will be an HPE Cray EX supercomputer that features over 5,000 Nvidia GH200 superchips. This will make Isambard one of the world’s first ARM-based supercomputers. When announced in November 2023, the government said Isambard is more than 10 times faster than the UK’s fastest supercomputer. If switched on today, Isambard would rank as one of the world’s top ten fastest supercomputers.
Dr Paul Calleja of Cambridge’s Open Zettascale Lab has stated that a “Phase 2 Dawn” supercomputer is in the works. This will give Dawn a 10x boost in performance. Phase 2 will greatly increase the UK’s AI capabilities, assuming the upgrade performs as expected.
Both Dawn and Isambard will greatly boost the UK’s supercomputing capabilities, and boost the UK’s position in the world of AI. At this time, it is unknown if the government plans to build more new supercomputers, or if their ambitions end with Dawn and Isambard.
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