
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
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
01/04/2026
January 4 2026, 18:00 (PST) DOLBY AND DOUYIN EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATON OF CREATORS WITH DOLBY VISION
Douyin Users Can Now Create And Share Videos With Stun...
11/02/2026
Video moves fast can your DAM keep up?
Join Blue Lucy in LA for the West Coast's leading Digital Asset Management event as we explore, celebrate, and acc...
11/02/2026
Wednesday 11 February 2026
Sky brings together Netflix, Disney , HBO Max and Ha...
11/02/2026
At the end of January, ICG headed off to the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, for our annual conference.
An early flight gave us plenty of time to start exploring s...
11/02/2026
The intergalactic children's show starring Adam King will premiere on 14 February on RT 2, RT KIDSjr and RT Player
The Late Late Toy Show star Adam King...
10/02/2026
With a new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights arriving just in time for Valent...
10/02/2026
Today, we announced our fourth quarter 2025 earnings, marking a strong finish to the year with exceptional user growth and continued momentum across the busines...
10/02/2026
I dag redovisar vi v rt resultat f r fj rde kvartalet 2025, vilket markerar ett starkt avslut p ret med robust anv ndartillv xt och fortsatt momentum i hela v...
10/02/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
10/02/2026
10 Feb 2026
VEON's Kyivstar Expands Digital Healthcare Services in Ukraine ...
10/02/2026
The new TV campaign is set to air on Sky from 10th February - 6th April inviting...
10/02/2026
Red Seat Ventures Acquires Leading Podcast Subscription Platform Supercast Los Angeles, CA, February 10, 2026 - Red Seat Ventures, a division of Fox Corporati...
10/02/2026
Arvato Systems celebrates a decade of innovation and customer success in the dig...
09/02/2026
Book a meeting or demonstration at ISE 2026! Please enter the following details. (Tick the relevant box for a meeting or demo):
--
Meeting / Demo*
Meeting...
09/02/2026
From Green Day using 2028s, Charlie Puth's rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner with a d:facto (as well as 4099s on many of the instruments) and Bad Bunny...
09/02/2026
RT Investigates rapid rise in waiting list for the Central Mental Hospital
am...
08/02/2026
08 Feb 2026
VEON and JazzWorld Launch Invest in Pakistan, NOW! Inviting Inter...
06/02/2026
Music fans know the feeling: A song stops you in your tracks, and you immediately want to know more. What inspired it, and what's the meaning behind it? We ...
06/02/2026
Calrec Wins Best of Show at ISE 2026 for Orchestrating Distributed IP Production
Calrec is delighted to announce that its IP Ecosystem Powered by True Control...
06/02/2026
TV Highlights: Saturday February 7th - Friday February 13th
What can I watch on TV in the UK this week? What can I watch on U&GOLD? What can I stream on U thi...
06/02/2026
The Winter Olympics 2026 in Milano Cortina officially get underway this evening (Friday 6 February) with the Opening Ceremony live on RT Player and RT News ch...
05/02/2026
Since bringing audiobooks to Spotify in 2022, we've helped listeners discove...
05/02/2026
Today, Spotify announced two new updates to give book lovers a more personalized...
05/02/2026
AI should balance automation (replacing tasks) and augmentation (empowering humans). Automate the mundane and augment the creative by applying the right AI type...
05/02/2026
BBC Studios and UKTV have appointed Karin Marelle to lead their Global Acquisitions team, overseeing the sourcing of content across BBC Studios' global chan...
05/02/2026
Thursday 5 February 2026
The Miniature Wife, A Sky Exclusive comedy drama starr...
05/02/2026
Thursday 5 February 2026
Trailer Revealed for Sky Original Film FUZE starring A...
05/02/2026
Rohde & Schwarz at MWC Barcelona 2026: Enabling connections, empowering innovati...
04/02/2026
Lyrics are one of Spotify's most popular features, giving fans a richer way to experience the music and artists they love. They're viewed hundreds of mi...
04/02/2026
Wednesday 4 February 2026
Full cast announced for Saturday Night Live UK, comin...
04/02/2026
Wednesday 4 February 2026
Fear of running out of mobile data (FORO) is a real i...
04/02/2026
Rohde & Schwarz powers next generation television in Brazil with DTV technology...
04/02/2026
Fox Corporation Reports Second Quarter Fiscal 2026 Financial Results NEW YORK, NY, February 4, 2026 - Fox Corporation (Nasdaq: FOXA, FOX; FOX or the Compan...
04/02/2026
Lucas P. Arag n Joins FOX Advertising as Senior Vice President, Creative New York, NY - February 4, 2026 - Accomplished Creative Executive Lucas P. Arag n has...
04/02/2026
Following the passing of our friend and colleague Hugh Wallace, and with the full support of his family, RT will proceed with the broadcast of the new series o...
03/02/2026
Spotify's annual Best New Artist celebration returned to Los Angeles last ni...
03/02/2026
FoMa Antares: Redefining Camera Stabilization for Modern ProductionsIn high-end broadcast and cinematic environments, precision, reliability, and flexibility ar...
03/02/2026
03 Feb 2026
VEON Welcomes Expanded Kyivstar Free Float After the Successful Kyi...
03/02/2026
Mel Giedroyc fronts brand new comedy entertainment format
3rd February 2026, London: U and U&Dave is set to launch brand-new escape room comedy entertainment s...
03/02/2026
Tuesday 3 February 2026
Iconic TV channel Sky One is coming back as the new hom...
03/02/2026
Wuppertal February 3, 2026
Riedel Connects Live Surgery and Medical Professionals at VISAR 2025Turnkey Managed Technology Solution Featuring Riedel MediorNet,...
02/02/2026
February 2 2026, 20:30 (PST) Mahindra launches XUV 7XO as Indias first vehicle ...
02/02/2026
Ahead of the hotly anticipated return of Bergerac to U and U&DRAMA in the Spring, a teaser has been released to give viewers a glimpse at what's in store in...
02/02/2026
Rohde & Schwarz reshapes mid-range market with new 44 GHz FPL spectrum analyzer ...
02/02/2026
In addition to DPA Microphones, the company will also be acquiring Wisycom and Austrian Audio. The acquisition is now being filed for regulatory approval and sh...
02/02/2026
Arvato Systems launches a flexible and standardized billing solution
New SAP S/4HANA Utilities master system combines standardization, economies of scale, and...