Nvidia announces new UK supercomputer to help fight COVID-19

Cambridge-1 will be among the world's top 30 most powerful supercomputers, and top three most environmentally-frien

Nvidia is building a new supercomputer, said to be the most powerful in the UK, which researchers will be able to use to address medical challenges - including those presented by coronavirus.

According to Nvidia, this advanced computing system - which will be called Cambridge-1 - will be capable of delivering 400 petaflops of AI performance and eight petaflops of Linpack performance. That means it will rank 29^th on the Top 500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. It will also be among the world's three most energy-efficient supercomputing systems on the Green500 list.

The machine will use 80 networked Nvidia DGX A100 systems, and will be the first Nvidia supercomputer designed for external research access.

Cambridge-1 is expected to be ready for use by the end of 2020 and will - unsurprisingly - be hosted in Cambridge. It will eventually become a part of the AI Centre of Excellence that Nvidia plans to build in the city.

Healthcare researchers at AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, King's College London and Oxford Nanopore Technology will be among the first to harness the power of the new system. GSK and AstraZeneca are currently involved in research to develop an effective vaccine for COVID-19.

Supercomputers can quickly analyse millions of molecules before deciding which are most likely to be useful in clinical trials, thus speeding up drug-discovery processes that would otherwise take many years to complete.

According to Nvidia, Cambridge-1 will focus on four key areas: joint research into major healthcare and data-science problems; compute time for university studies on medical cures; support for AI startups; and education for future AI practitioners.

The company says it is investing around $51.7 million into the supercomputer.

"The Cambridge-1 supercomputer will serve as a hub of innovation for the UK, and further the groundbreaking work being done by the nation's researchers in critical healthcare and drug discovery," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia.

Britain's health minister Matt Hancock said, "accelerating drug discovery has never been so important" and the investment from Nvidia could "make a real difference".

Flann Horgan, VP Healthcare at NTT DATA UK, commented: "Artificial intelligence is one of the most exciting new frontiers for healthcare in the 21st century, which is enabled by HPC [high-performance computing]. In clinical research, AI is an integral tool for augmenting the capabilities of researchers, rapidly processing large volumes of data and producing detailed insights into trends and patterns in the data - ultimately guiding the direction of clinical research. "

"Moreover, when facing an adversary like this coronavirus, time is of the essence. Having 400 petaflops at the disposal of researchers and clinicians will make it feasible to respond in ways that would have been inconceivable only a few years ago."

"As we look beyond COVID-19, the life sciences and healthcare sectors needs to continue to innovate and probe how cutting-edge technology can support advancements in medical knowledge. COVID-19 will not be the last global pandemic. The healthcare sector needs to learn from the experience of COVID-19 and embrace new technological innovations, in order to continue expanding the frontiers of medical knowledge and ensure we are well-prepared for future outbreaks."