Chris Malachowsky, Nvidia co-founder

Nvidia and The University of Florida (UF) are in engaging in a unique public-private partnership that could result in the development of the largest university AI supercomputer in the United States, and perhaps the world. The project is anchored by a $25 million gift from UF alumnus and Nvidia co-founder, Chris Malachowsky along with a matching $25 million grant from Nvidia in the form of hardware, software, training, and services, as well as an additional $20 million from UF for data center upgrades.

The project was inspired by Malachowsky who was looking for a way to help the university expand its reach and bring artificial intelligence (AI) to the forefront at UF. The initiative includes a commitment from UF to hire 100 additional faculty members focused on AI. They will join 500 new faculty recently added across disciplines many of whom will weave AI into their teaching and research. The University expects to integrate the use of this AI supercomputer throughout various departments. In addition, the University is introducing a Bachelor of Science degree in Data Science this fall.

Malachowsky hopes this unique project will become a template for other universities and companies to follow. He is quoted as saying: Artificial intelligence is the most disruptive technology of our era, with sweeping implications for how we live and work. In my conversation with Malachowsky he expressed great enthusiasm for bringing AI to a broad set of disciplines at the UF - from precision agriculture, to astrophysics, and to marine biology. The obvious applications are in engineering disciplines for applications such as autonomous driving research. In addition, Malachowsky also expects there will be courses in other areas such as the ethics of AI and journalism to understanding the impact of AI on society.

Malachowsky believes that the Nvidia AI supercomputer will enhance research into all these areas with both number crunching and machine learning capability. In particular, he believes that solving some of the toughest problems we face today, such as alternative energy and climate change, requires an interdisciplinary approach that includes massive compute power and machine learning for simulation and modeling.

Overall, there would be an general enhancement to STEM (short for Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education throughout the University. The system that Nvidia will be delivering to UF later this year which will be up and running just a few weeks later is an Nvidia DGX SuperPOD. A similar, though larger, in-house system at Nvidia called Selene is in the No. 7 spot in the latest Top500 supercomputer list with an HPL mark of 27.58 petaflops. The DGX SuperPOD is powered by Nvidas new Ampere A100 GPUs and AMDs EPYC Rome CPUs and uses Mellanox HDR InfiniBand as the system network. Separately, it was announced earlier this year that UF was the first institution of higher learning in the U.S. to receive DGX A100 systems, which have already been deployed in an existing supercomputer.

NVIDIA SuperPOD Data Center

This public-private initiative could be a model for other industry and academic collaborations. Alumni can work with their alma mater, industry, and local governments to make significant hardware and monetary contributions while the universities would provide the academic environment and the researchers to put that hardware to work. Malachowsky believes that this type of program can help to improve the United States international competitiveness if it were to be replicated. UF is already moving ahead with improving access to its technology and will make the AI supercomputer available to other state and regional schools.

Malachowsky believes this really is a moonshot opportunity for the University and for all educators to leverage this unprecedented access to advanced compute capability and AI to advance the country.

The author and members of the Tirias Research staff do not hold equity positions in any of the companies mentioned. Tirias Research tracks and consults for companies throughout the electronics ecosystem from semiconductors to systems and sensors to the cloud. Members of the Tirias Research team are tracking all the developments in AI technology and have consulted for Nvidia and other companies focused on AI solutions. The author was an Nvidia employee from 2006 to 2010.

Link:

Nvidia And University Of Florida Supercharge Education With AI Supercomputer - Forbes