- Co-designed with Intel, Dell Technologies, the University of Cambridge and with additional investment from UK Research and Innovation, Dawn resides at the Cambridge Open ZettaScale Lab.
- Deployed as the U.K.’s most powerful AI supercomputing cloud1 using the Scientific OpenStack cloud software developed with UK SME StackHPC.
Dawn kickstarts the recently launched U.K. AI Research Resource (AIRR)2, which will explore the viability of associated systems and architectures. Dawn brings the U.K. closer to reaching the compute threshold of a quintillion (1018) floating point operations per second – one exaflop, better known as exascale. For perspective: Every person on earth would have to make calculations 24 hours a day for more than four years to equal a second’s worth of processing power in an exascale system.
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| Paul Calleja (left), director of Dawn Al Service, and Richard McMahon, UKRI Dawn principal investigator, stand in front of the Dawn supercomputer. On Nov. 2, 2023, University of Cambridge, Intel and Dell Technologies announced Dawn, the fastest Al supercomputer in the U.K. (Credit: Joe Bishop for Cambridge Open Zettascale Lab) |
“Dawn considerably strengthens the scientific and AI compute capability available in the U.K., and it’s on the ground, operational today at the Cambridge Open Zettascale Lab. Dell PowerEdge XE9640 servers offer a no-compromises platform to host the Intel Data Center GPU Max Series accelerator, which opens up the ecosystem to choice through oneAPI. I’m very excited to see the sorts of early science this machine can deliver and continue to strengthen the Open Zettascale Lab partnership between Dell Technologies, Intel and the University of Cambridge, and further broaden that to the U.K. scientific and AI community,” said Adam Roe, EMEA HPC technical director at Intel.
Dawn was born of a co-design partnership between Dell Technologies, Intel, University of Cambridge and additional investment from UK Research and Innovation. Dawn is the fastest AI supercomputer deployed in the U.K. today1 and will support some of the U.K.’s largest-ever workloads across both academic research and industrial domains. Usage domains include healthcare, engineering, green fusion energy, climate modelling and frontier science within cosmology and high-energy physics.
The new supercomputer is based on Dell PowerEdge XE9640 servers4. With its versatile configuration options and liquid cooling technology, the server system is well-equipped to handle the demands of AI and HPC workloads. Direct liquid cooling technology provides a more efficient and cost-effective solution than traditional air-cooled systems.
Each PowerEdge XE9640 server in this system combines two 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and four Intel Data Center GPU Max accelerators to deliver strong performance and high efficiency for solving real-world scientific problems. The Scientific OpenStack from UK SME StackHPC provides a fully AI- and simulation-optimized cloud supercomputing software environment. This is combined with the oneAPI open software ecosystem and optimized frameworks that help developers speed up AI and HPC workloads and enhance code portability across multiple hardware architectures.
Technical details and performance numbers for Dawn Phase 1 will be released in mid-November during the Supercomputing 23 (SC23) conference in Denver, Colorado
Dawn was born of a co-design partnership between Dell Technologies, Intel, University of Cambridge and additional investment from UK Research and Innovation. Dawn is the fastest AI supercomputer deployed in the U.K. today1 and will support some of the U.K.’s largest-ever workloads across both academic research and industrial domains. Usage domains include healthcare, engineering, green fusion energy, climate modelling and frontier science within cosmology and high-energy physics.
The new supercomputer is based on Dell PowerEdge XE9640 servers4. With its versatile configuration options and liquid cooling technology, the server system is well-equipped to handle the demands of AI and HPC workloads. Direct liquid cooling technology provides a more efficient and cost-effective solution than traditional air-cooled systems.
Each PowerEdge XE9640 server in this system combines two 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and four Intel Data Center GPU Max accelerators to deliver strong performance and high efficiency for solving real-world scientific problems. The Scientific OpenStack from UK SME StackHPC provides a fully AI- and simulation-optimized cloud supercomputing software environment. This is combined with the oneAPI open software ecosystem and optimized frameworks that help developers speed up AI and HPC workloads and enhance code portability across multiple hardware architectures.
Technical details and performance numbers for Dawn Phase 1 will be released in mid-November during the Supercomputing 23 (SC23) conference in Denver, Colorado
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