On Monday, Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) announced that it was developing Israel’s most powerful AI supercomputer to fulfill rising customer demand for AI applications.
Nvidia, the world’s most valuable listed chip maker, said the cloud-based system would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and be partially operational by the end of 2023.
Nvidia senior vice president Gilad Shainer said Nvidia collaborated with 800 Israeli startups and tens of thousands of software professionals.
Israel-1, one of the world’s fastest AI supercomputers, is estimated to deliver up to eight exaflops. One exaflop can execute one quintillion calculations per second.
Shainer called AI the “most important technology in our lifetime” and required massive GPUs for AI and generative AI development.
Generative AI is omnipresent. He told Reuters that Israeli companies would have a supercomputer to do training on massive datasets.
“This system is a large-scale system that actually will enable them to do training much quicker, to build frameworks and build solutions that can tackle more complex problems.”
OpenAI’s ChatGPT used thousands of Nvidia GPUs.
Mellanox created it. In 2019, Nvidia outbid Intel Corp. for Israeli chip creator Mellanox Technologies, paying roughly $7 billion.
Shainer claimed Nvidia prioritized Israeli partners for the supercomputer. “We may use this system to work with partners outside of Israel down the road,” he said.
Last week, Nvidia announced it had teamed with Britain’s University of Bristol to construct a new supercomputer utilizing a new Nvidia chip to compete with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.