A NEW supercomputer being built in Emersons Green is vital to government plans to use artificial intelligence to boost growth and living standards.
The £225 million Isambard-AI is already partly operational in a facility run by Bristol University at the National Composites Centre.
When it is fully up and running, it will be used to power the use of AI to drive forward research and development in robotics, data, climate research and medicines.
In January Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced an AI Action Plan, saying that the technology would be “unleashed across the UK to deliver a decade of national renewal”.
The government says AI can “transform the lives of working people” by speeding up the work of public services, cutting admin and even spotting potholes on roads.
The university’s Bristol Centre for Supercomputing (BriCS) team says Isambard-AI will “play a central role” in delivering hugely-improved AI capability for the UK, as the country’s fastest and most powerful supercomputer, purpose-built for AI research.
The Voice first reported on plans to build Isambard-AI in 2023, as part of the UK’s first ever Artificial Intelligence Research Resource at the Bristol & Bath Science Park.
Plans for a new building to house the computer on the NCC car park, surrounded by a high-security fence, were unveiled at the end of that year and passed last February.
Just three months later, part one of Isambard-AI was online; it will be the UK’s fastest and most powerful supercomputer once part two is complete this summer.
The university says Isambard-AI “will offer capacity never seen before in the UK for researchers and industry to harness the huge potential of AI”.
It will also enable the UK’s ‘sovereign AI capability’ for the first time, the ability to produce AI with the country’s own infrastructure, data, workforce and networks.
BriCS director Professor Simon McIntosh-Smith said: “Capable of performing in one second what would take the combined efforts of the entire global population 81 years, Isambard-AI represents a transformative leap forward.
“Already operational and with full production coming this year, it will play a central role in delivering a 20-fold increase in the UK’s AI capability within just a few years—faster and more cost-efficiently than commercial alternatives.
“This is a pivotal moment for AI in the UK.”
University vice-chancellor and president Evelyn Welch said: “This is a vote of confidence for the university and the city.
“With its world-class technology, Isambard-AI will help nourish talent by providing training and support for students and researchers in advanced computational methods, while fostering interdisciplinary research efforts in the UK and globally.”
Projects already being tackled by phase one of the computer include research into the role inflamed blood vessels play in heart disease, using cameras to monitor the health of farm animals, drug design, new vaccines and a genetic modelling project that could lead to a better understanding of cancer.
Isambard-AI is being described as “the most sustainable supercomputer in the UK”, housed in a low-carbon, climate-controlled modular building with “significant potential” to recycle the waste heat.
Writing in a blog on the university website, Prof McIntosh-Smith said: “The university’s energy supply is all renewable and we’re building one of the most energy-efficient supercomputers ever.
“The waste heat from the system is all captured in the form of hot water.
“In Scandinavia, they plug this waste hot water into district heating circuits for local homes. We’re in talks with our local council about whether we can do the same.”
Prof McIntosh-Smith said when BriCS bid to host the new AI facility in 2023, the government asked him: “If money was no object, what’s your limit?”
The limit was the five megawatt power supply at the NCC site, so he was told: “Build us a five-megawatt AI supercomputer.”
Prof McIntosh-Smith said: “Isambard-AI allows us to do things only Meta, Amazon or Google could do until now – it’s brilliant to be putting these tools and capabilities into the hands of scientists across the UK.”