July 21, 2020
The University of Florida and NVIDIA Tuesday unveiled a plan to build the world's fastest AI supercomputer in academia, delivering 700 petaflops of AI performance.
The effort is anchored by a $50 million gift: $25 million from alumnus and NVIDIA co-founder Chris Malachowsky and $25 million in hardware, software, training and services from NVIDIA.
"We've created a replicable, powerful model of public-private cooperation for everyone's benefit," said Malachowsky, who serves as an NVIDIA Fellow, in an online event featuring leaders from both the UF and NVIDIA.
UF will invest an additional $20 million to create an AI-centric supercomputing and data center.
The $70 million public-private partnership promises to make UF one of the leading AI universities in the country, advance academic research and help address some of the state's most complex challenges.
"This is going to be a tremendous partnership," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. "As we look to keep our best talent in state, this will be a significant carrot, you'll also see people around the country want to come to Florida."
Working closely with NVIDIA, UF will boost the capabilities of its existing supercomputer, HiPerGator, with the recently announced
NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD architecture. The system will be up and running by early 2021, just a few weeks after it's delivered.
This gives faculty and students within and beyond UF the tools to apply AI across a multitude of areas to address major challenges such as rising seas, aging populations, data security, personalized medicine, urban transportation and food insecurity.
UF expects to create 30,000 AI-enabled graduates by 2030.
The effort aims to help define a research landscape to deal with the COVID-19, pandemic, which has seen supercomputers take a leading role.
"Our vision is to become the nation's first AI university," University of Florida President Kent Fuchs said. "I am so grateful again to Mr. Malachowsky and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang.
And to ensure no community is left behind, UF plans to promote wide accessibility to these computing capabilities.
As part of this, UF will:
- Establish UF's Equitable AI program, to bring faculty members across the university together to create standards and certifications for developing tools and solutions that are cognizant of bias, unethical practice and legal and moral issues.
- Partner with industry and other academic groups, such as the Inclusive Engineering Consortium, whose students will work with members to conduct research and recruitment to UF graduate programs.
NVIDIA will also contribute its AI expertise to UF through ongoing support and collaboration across the following initiatives:
- The NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute will collaborate with UF on developing new curriculum and coursework for both students and the community, including programing tuned to address the needs of young adults and teens to encourage their interest in STEM and AI, better preparing them for future educational and employment opportunities.
- UF will become the site of the latest NVIDIA AI Technology Center, where UF Graduate Fellows and NVIDIA employees will work together to advance AI.
- NVIDIA solution architects and product engineers will partner with UF on the installation, operation and optimization of the NVIDIA-based supercomputing resources on campus, including the latest AI software applications.
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