Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) has announced that CINECA, an Italian inter-university consortium, will build the fasters AI supercomputer through Nvidia’s accelerated computing platform.
New AI supercomputer called Leonardo
The new system called “Leonardo” built with Atos will deliver around 10 exaflops of FP16 AI performance capabilities enabling advanced AI, as well as HPC-converged applications. It features over 14,000 Nvidia Ampere-based GPUs as well as Nvidia-Mellanox-HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand networking.
Once completed, Leonardo will be among the four new supercomputers funded by a cross-European initiative, EuroHPC, for advancing high-performance capabilities and eventually provide advanced AI capabilities for processing applications in Science and innovation. Leonardo will make Italy a global AI leader as well as in high-performance innovation and research. Nvidia will supply the Mellanox HDR InfiniBand networks for this initiative to enhance performance across clusters having low latency connections.
Other computers in the cluster include Vega in Slovenia and MeluXina in Luxembourg, and a new supercooling unit that will come online in the Czech Republic. Interestingly the pan-European consortium is also planning to have another four supercomputers in Spain, Bulgaria, Portugal, and Finland. However, these are expected to come later and have different specifics on performance and location.
EuroHPC tech opening roadmap for innovation and research
Marc Hamilton, Nvidia’s VP of solutions architecture and engineering, said that the EuroHPC technology pathway for exascale in Europe has opened doors for quick innovation and growth in AI and HPC. He added that the company is working with Atos and CINECA to accelerate scientific discovery in various application domains and offer a platform to welcome a new age of exascale computing.
It is important to note that modern scientific computing needs high-performance data analytics, simulation, visualization, and AI and machine learning. The company’s platform accelerates these workloads by offering high throughput and reduced power consumption. The CINECA supercomputer and others will offer to analyze genomes, discover new therapeutic pathways, model weather patterns, and handle data from various sources for extra-terrestrial planetary research and space exploration.