Bristol supercomputer set to be Britain's fastest as gov't boosts investment into AI research

By Giles Gwinnett

3 November 2023

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The UK government has announced it will boost Britain's supercomputing 30-fold with a new computer in Bristol and Cambridge, which will support research into making the most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models safe.

The two computers will form the government's 'AI Research Resource' - into which funding has been tripled to £300 million, up from the £100 million announced in March this year.

The machines will be running from summer 2024 and be used to analyse advanced AI models to test safety features and drive breakthroughs in drug discovery and clean energy.

The Isambard-AI in Bristol, based at the university, will be Britain’s most advanced computer, thanks to 5,000 advanced AI chips from Nvidia in a supercomputer built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

It will be able to deliver over 200 ‘petaflops’, meaning it can make 200,000,000,000,000,000 calculations (that's 200 quadrillion) every second.

For comparison, a human would have to make a decision every second for 6.3 billion years to match what the machine can calculate in just one second.

The investment boost will mean Isambard-AI can be connected up to a newly announced Cambridge supercomputer called ‘Dawn'.

Announcing the news of the investment at this week's AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, the government's science, innovation and technology secretary Michelle Donelan said Britain was "grasping the opportunity to lead the world" in adopting this technology safely so we can lead "healthier, easier and longer lives".

"This means giving Britain’s leading researchers and scientific talent access to the tools they need to delve into how this complicated technology works.

"That is why we are investing in building UK’s supercomputers, making sure we cement our place as a world-leader in AI safety," she said.

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By Giles Gwinnett

Giles Gwinnett is a writer at The Business Magazine. He has been a journalist for more than 20 years and covered a vast array of topics at a range of media settings - in print and online. After his NCTJ newspaper training, he became a reporter in Hampshire before moving to a news agency in Gloucestershire. In recent years, he has been covering the financial markets along with company news for an investor-focused web portal. His many interests include politics, energy and the environment. He lives in Dorset.