This back-to-school season, many universities are powering on brand new AI supercomputers. Researchers and students working in fields from basic science to liberal arts can't wait to log on.
They would like to use it right now, said James Wilgenbusch, director of research computing at the University of Minnesota, speaking of Agate, an accelerated supercomputer Hewlett Packard Enterprise is building.
It's one of at least eight new academic systems lighting up around the world - four in America's heartland and two in the U.K.
Before the semester's end, Agate will deliver seven petaflops of umph. It will crunch through research from socio-economic trends to celestial objects - it really will serve the full gamut, he said of the system to be housed at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) that will link 265 NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs on an NVIDIA HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand network.
Agate will serve about 4,500 users, working under a thousand principal investigators who since January have already run a whopping 138,612 GPU-accelerated jobs on MSI's existing systems.
Getting fired up: The Agate supercomputer in Chippewa Falls undergoes burn-in testing. (Picture courtesy HPE) We're seeing annual user growth, the greatest amount of it in life sciences and liberal arts - fields like geology, history, poli-sci, marketing - anywhere people have vast quantities of unstructured data and they're attempting to make sense of it, he said.
AI Supercomputer Helps Fight COVID Demonstrating the power of accelerated computing, the Minnesota Department of Health reserved a portion of MSI's system in its fight against COVID-19. It's sequencing genomes for contract tracing and to track variants of the coronavirus.
Collaborations like this make the role of universities in innovation and life saving more obvious to the public, said Wilgenbusch, pointing to articles in a Minneapolis newspaper.
Virtual GPUs Power Indiana Classrooms Some 600 miles southeast, Indiana University (IU) is standing up two AI supercomputers packing a total of 616 A100 GPUs.
Big Red 200, built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, will serve the nine IU campuses. Jetstream-2, built by Dell Technologies, will power work at several partner institutions from Cornell to the University of Hawaii.
Tapping the A100's ability to offer fractions of a processor, Jetstream-2 will host classes with hundreds of students, each using a slice of a GPU's performance to learn popular AI skills like image classification. One IU researcher presented a paper last November benchmarking the virtual GPU capability.
Now whole classrooms can be trained in one go, so more people get access, said Winona Snapp-Childs, chief operating officer of IU's Pervasive Technology Institute and leader of an AI-for-everyone initiative.
A Vision of Ubiquitous AI More than 2,500 students use IU's current GPU-accelerated systems. They ran more than 40 percent of the work for the university's record $1 billion of research contracts and grants spread across 178 departments last year.
Funding agencies realize the importance of machine learning in academic fields across the spectrum, said Snapp-Childs.
AI and accelerated computing help push the boundaries of science, and I can imagine they will come to handle half of our research over the next 5 to 10 years as these techniques become ubiquitous and imperative for research, she added.
The work spans a spectrum that can set your head spinning. Researchers are tapping AI for everything from tracking down COVID misinformation on social networks to studying the genome of rice to improve harvests.
Delta Pioneers Accessible Supercomputing Next door, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is expanding use of accelerated computing with Delta, an AI supercomputer packing more than 800 A100 GPUs.
We will help emerging research areas such as computational archaeology and digital agriculture take advantage of new computing methods and hardware while making advanced systems more usable and accessible to a broad community of researchers, said William Gropp, a principal investigator and NCSA director who oversees Delta.
The system is one way the National Science Foundation is spreading GPU-based computing as a common tool for accelerating research. The work includes an initiative to make Delta and future systems more accessible to people with disabilities.
Florida Spreads the AI Sunshine A thousand miles south, the University of Florida's HiPerGator AI system provides another shining example of accelerated computing.
In a recent article in the Gainesville Sun, provost Joe Glover said the system will spread AI skills much like Henry Ford's first assembly line made cars affordable for Americans. The university aims to add 100 AI-focused faculty to make machine learning ubiquitous across its curriculum with a stated goal of creating 30,000 AI-enabled graduates by 2030.
HiPerGator AI linked a whopping 1,120 A100 GPUs on a HDR 200Gb/s InfiniBand network to take the No. 22 spot in the latest TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers. It was built in just a few weeks thanks to its use of the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD reference architecture, a recipe for stacking NVIDIA DGX systems in Lego-like style.
Studying Abroad: AI Supercomputing's Far Reach These five AI supercomputers represent just a few peaks in a rising range that crisscrosses the U.S. and Europe.
On the UC Berkeley campus, researchers just turned on Perlmutter, the world's fifth fastest system, packing 6,144 A100 GPUs.
The University of Cambridge debuted CSD3, a cloud-native supercomputer built on Dell EMC PowerEdge, which is now the fastest academic system in the U.K. and hit No. 3 on the Green500 list of the world
Europe Stories
23/12/2025
The year is winding down, the weather outside is frightful, and it's the perfect time to escape into a story that warms the heart. For listeners looking for...
23/12/2025
23 Dec 2025
VEON's Beeline Kazakhstan and Rakuten Symphony Collaborate to A...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Monday 22 December 2025
Sky extends PGA TOUR partnership until 2029, as Sky Spo...
22/12/2025
Siobh n McSweeney, Rory McIlroy, Elon Musk, Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, Ivan Yates and Traitor Paudie Moloney lead new characters for Callan Kicks the Year 2...
22/12/2025
Winner announced in the picturesque surroundings of Wicklow's Avondale Tower and Treetop Walk
Andrew Trimble wins the show in his first series as coach
Th...
22/12/2025
The 2025 winners have been announced today, Sunday 21 December, for Ireland's largest choral competition Choirs for Christmas hosted by RT lyric fm.
Ove...
21/12/2025
John Shortt named Young Sportsperson of the Year Kerry are the Team of the Year
...
19/12/2025
With Playout Release 2025.4, ToolsOnAir continues to push professional playout w...
19/12/2025
19 Dec 2025
VEON's Mobilink Microfinance Bank Launches Islamic Banking Oper...
19/12/2025
The six-part drama, set in a close-knit Welsh town fractured by an unspeakable c...
19/12/2025
Rohde & Schwarz drives the future of mobility at CES 2026 At the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Rohde & Schwarz will present a powerful lineup o...
19/12/2025
RT is proud to return to the RDS to support the 2026 Stripe Young Scientist & T...
18/12/2025
Canada's largest indoor arena has transformed its live production capabilities with a full ST 2110 infrastructure and Calrec's compact Argo S console. S...
18/12/2025
Long-term agreement includes the SES SCORE platform and hybrid distribution worldwide to deliver more than 5,000 hours of golf tournaments annually featuring th...
18/12/2025
18 Dec 2025
VEON Upgraded to Nasdaq Global Select Market, Enhancing Investor Visibility Dubai, December 18, 2025 - VEON Ltd. (Nasdaq: VEON), a global digital o...
18/12/2025
Thursday 18 December 2025
Sky Sports remains the exclusive home of the Masters ...
18/12/2025
Using the additive process of 3D printing, layer after layer gets printed until an object is as close to the final shape needed as possible. Historically, machi...
18/12/2025
In 2025, RT proudly supported 185 arts and cultural events across the island of Ireland, reflecting significant growth since the scheme was re-launched in 2014...
18/12/2025
RT Sports Awards 2025 live on RT One and RT Player at 8:05pm on Saturday 20 December
On Saturday 20 December live on RT One and RT Player at the earlier t...
18/12/2025
RT lyric fm presents a very special Winter Solstice edition of Ambient Orbit, l...
18/12/2025
At 7.45pm on 1st January 1926, the precursor to RT , then 2RN, delivered the fledgling new Irish state's first public radio transmission. From those first c...
18/12/2025
December 18 2025, 05:30 (PST) The Movie Experience SLO Becomes First U.S. Exhib...
17/12/2025
Investigative journalists across the Western Balkans and T rkiye continue to con...
17/12/2025
The right playlist is essential on New Year's Eve, building the energy as you get ready and keeping it high as you count down to midnight. This year, Spotif...
17/12/2025
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({...
17/12/2025
Wuppertal December 17, 2025
Riedel Builds Global Communication and Commentary ...
17/12/2025
December 17 2025, 17:00 (PST) Dolby and LG Unveil a New Era of Home Audio With ...
17/12/2025
Wednesday 17 December 2025
Heated Rivalry will be coming to Sky and streaming service NOW on 10 JanuaryTurn on cookies to view this content. Go to Privacy opti...
17/12/2025
RT has announced that Kathy Fox has been appointed Commissioning Editor with re...
17/12/2025
With the new season of Dancing with the Stars shimmering in the not-too-distant future this New Year, the celebrity and dancer pairings of the twelve couples ha...
16/12/2025
Hawkins has landed on Spotify, just in time for Stranger Things Season 5, Volume...
16/12/2025
Wherever you are, your favorite music and audio content should go seamlessly with you. That's why Spotify has partnered with NAVER Corp, Korea's leading...
16/12/2025
2025 Wrapped arrived bigger and bolder than ever. This year's experience is designed to be ultra personal and shareable, with new features like Wrapped Part...
16/12/2025
16 Dec 2025
VEON Announces Release Date for Full Year and Fourth Quarter 2025 R...
16/12/2025
16 Dec 2025
VEON's Kyivstar Invests in Renewable Energy in Ukraine with Acq...
16/12/2025
Harmonic's XOS Advanced Media Processor Improves Streaming Video Quality and Boosts Viewer Engagement SAN JOSE, Calif. - Dec. 16, 2025 - Harmonic (NASDAQ: ...
16/12/2025
RT Sport Awards 2025 live on RT One and RT Player at 8:05pm on Saturday 20 December.
On Saturday 20 December live on RT One and RT Player at the earlier t...
16/12/2025
Singer -songwriter Brian Kennedy has been announced as the final celebrity dance...
15/12/2025
Cape Town, November 13, 2025 - SES and International artist and humanitarian, Fo...
15/12/2025
Luxembourg, December 15, 2025 - SES, a leading space solutions company, and Abra Group launched fast and reliable multi-orbit inflight connectivity service on t...
15/12/2025
15 Dec 2025
VEON's Beeline Kazakhstan Delivers First Starlink Direct to Cel...
15/12/2025
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor finds himself the topic of year's cracker jokes
Oasis, David Harbour, Celebrity Traitors and Angela Rayner all feature in this y...
15/12/2025
Comscore Expands Cross-Platform Campaign Measurement to Include Audio and Social New capabilities strengthen cross-platform campaign reporting suite; CCR rebran...
15/12/2025
RT .ie has reached one billion page views this year and is on track to finish 2025 2% ahead of last year. Average time spent on the site is up 3% on 2024, with ...
12/12/2025
Last month, Spotify announced a new collaboration with the ATP Tour, the global governing body of men's professional tennis, aimed at bringing the next gene...
12/12/2025
Friday 12 December 2025
Ted is back! Seth MacFarlane's live-action comedic ...
12/12/2025
Uachtar n na h ireann, Catherine Connolly visited RT Raidi na Gaeltachta's...
12/12/2025
Ireland AM host Eric Roberts has been revealed as the sixth contestant taking to...
This back-to-school season, many universities are powering on brand new AI supercomputers. Researchers and students working in fields from basic science to liberal arts can't wait to log on.
