NVIDIA Building One Of World’s Fastest Supercomputers In Israel

US computer graphics and chip giant NVIDIA is building one of the world’s fastest AI supercomputers in Israel. 

The supercomputer, named Israel-1, has been developed in the country over the last 18 months at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. 

NVIDIA says the supercomputer will be used as a blueprint and testbed for its Spectrum-X, a new networking platform that is designed to improve the performance and efficiency of Ethernet-based AI clouds. It aims to allow developers to build applications while reducing run-times of massive generative AI models.  

The rise of generative AI applications like ChatGPT present new challenges for networks inside data centers. As a result of these major changes, AI cloud systems need to be trained using huge amounts of data.

The Spectrum-X will be built for generative AI workloads and will be tailored to data centers around the world and help them transition to AI. 

The Israel-1 will run at a performance of eight exaflops. One exaflop is capable of performing one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations per second. 

“Transformative technologies such as generative AI are forcing every enterprise to push the boundaries of data center performance in pursuit of competitive advantage,” said Gilad Shainer, senior vice president of networking at NVIDIA.

“NVIDIA Spectrum-X is a new class of Ethernet networking that removes barriers for next-generation AI workloads that have the potential to transform entire industries.”