Awakening: Igniting a revolution with supercharged AI technology in the U.K.

The Cambridge Open Zettascale Lab has unveiled the UK’s fastest AI supercomputer, called Dawn Phase 1. The supercomputer, powered by the latest Intel GPUs and CPUs, combines artificial intelligence and high-performance computing to support complex research in areas including bioscience, fusion energy, and climate modeling. Dawn is expected to drive discoveries and advancements in these fields, helping researchers solve some of the world’s most challenging problems.

Dawn was developed through a partnership among the University of Cambridge, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, UK Research and Innovation, Dell Technologies, and Intel. The supercomputer runs 512 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors and 1,024 Intel Data Center GPU Max 1550 accelerators on 256 Dell PowerEdge XE9640 server nodes. It also features innovative direct liquid cooling technology for improved compute density, performance per watt, and energy efficiency.

In addition to its computational capabilities, Dawn is also an important step toward achieving exascale computing in the UK. Exascale computing refers to the ability to perform a quintillion floating point operations per second, enabling groundbreaking discoveries in various fields of research.

The deployment of Dawn Phase 1 is just the beginning, as Cambridge, Dell, and Intel plan to deliver Dawn Phase 2 in 2024 with even higher AI compute performance. The UK government has also announced a £300 million investment in AI innovation through the creation of the AI Research Resource, which will further support the advancement of AI supercomputing in the country.