Category: News | Published: 2025-07-30
A Major Leap in UK Computing Power
Isambard-AI was officially launched in mid-July at the University of Bristol, marking a significant milestone in the UK’s push to become a global leader in AI and high-performance computing (HPC). Developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) using its advanced Cray EX architecture, the system is powered by more than 5,400 NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips and is housed within the Bristol Centre for Supercomputing.
Its raw computing performance reaches 216.5 petaflops, with a peak theoretical output of 278.6 petaflops. For comparison, one petaflop equals one quadrillion (that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000) calculations per second … i.e a million billion! To put that in context, Isambard-AI is over ten times more powerful than the UK’s next-fastest system, London’s Njoerd supercluster.