Edinburgh’s super-computer first European site to use Cerebras CS-1 AI system

Edinburgh’s super-computing facility, the EPCC has announced the selection of the world’s fastest AI computer, the Cerebras CS-1, for the Edinburgh International Data Facility.

The Cerebras CS-1 is the most powerful AI computer in existence. It contains a collection of industry firsts, including the Cerebras Wafer Scale Engine (WSE). The WSE is the largest chip ever built. It contains 1.2 trillion transistors, covers more than 46,225 square millimeters of silicon and contains 400,000 AI-optimised compute cores.

EPCC will used the Cerebras CS-1 for unprecedented AI scalability and massive data handling capability. The system will greatly reduce training time, the most time-intensive part of AI. In artificial intelligence, large chips process information more quickly, producing answers in less time. As a result, AI networks that in the past took months to train, can now train in minutes on the Cerebras WSE.

The EIDF will support the University of Edinburgh’s ambition to deliver more Data-Driven Innovation industry partnerships and transform the region into the ‘Data capital of Europe,’ one of its key ambitions as a partner in the City Region Deal.

“We are proud to announce this audacious infrastructure investment and partnership with the world leaders in AI computing,” said Professor Mark Parsons, EPCC Director. “This installation will enable massive breakthroughs in our vision for data science and greatly accelerate our research across genomics and public health, including time-sensitive and pressing issues such as leveraging AI across large models to advance COVID-19 therapeutic research.”

AI-powered data science initiatives in the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region will be boosted in areas such as national-scale genomics research for public health initiatives. It also advances AI research for natural language processing of global academic and industry interest, using deep learning models.

“We are excited to bring our industry-leading CS-1 AI supercomputer, coupled with HPE’s advanced memory server, to EPCC and the European market to help solve some of today’s most urgent problems,” said Andrew Feldman, CEO and co-founder of Cerebras. “Our vision with the CS-1 was to reduce the cost of curiosity, and we look forward to the myriad experiments and world-changing solutions that will emerge from EPCC’s regional data center.”

The CS-1 is built around the world’s largest processor, the WSE, which is 56 times larger, has 54 times more cores, 450 times more on-chip memory, 5,788 times more memory bandwidth and 20,833 times more fabric bandwidth than the leading graphics processing unit competitor.

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