U.K. Secretary of State Peter Kyle was joined by Simon McIntosh-Smith, director of the Bristol Centre for Supercomputing, and Neil MacDonald, executive vice president and general manager  for Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s server business.

“And as we press this switch to activate the UK’s most powerful supercomputer, we are embarking on Britain’s super future where AI contributes towards the delivery of better public services, greater public prosperity, deeper scientific discovery and stronger national security,” Kyle said.

 The computer features:

  • 21 exaflops of AI performance
  • 5,448 NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips
  • Set to rank 11th worldwide on the latest TOP500 list of world’s fastest supercomputers
  • More than 10x faster than the next-fastest supercomputer in the U.K. More computing power than all other U.K. supercomputers combined
  • Ranked fourth globally for energy efficiency

Engineering teams working collaboratively to maneuver and install components, illustrating the complex and coordinated effort behind the build.Engineering teams working collaboratively to manoeuvre and install components within the supercomputer’s data hall.

Isambard-AI gives U.K. researchers and businesses a resource to accelerate breakthroughs in:

  • AI-driven drug discovery
  • Advanced climate modeling
  • Materials science
  • Large language models (LLMs) tuned to U.K. languages and laws

The project was backed by £225 million in government investment and built with NVIDIA, HPE, the University of Bristol and others.