UAE’s G42, Cerebras unveil world’s largest AI supercomputer

UAE’s G42 and Cerebras Systems have unveiled Condor Galaxy, a network of nine interconnected supercomputers, offering a new approach to artificial intelligence (AI) computing that promises to significantly reduce AI model training time.

G42 said the first AI supercomputer on this network, Condor Galaxy 1 (CG-1), has the capacity of 4 exaFLOPs and 54 million cores, with 64 Cerebras CS-2 systems linked together into a single, easy-to-use AI supercomputer.

Cerebras and G42 offer CG-1 as cloud service allowing customers to enjoy the performance of an AI supercomputer without having to manage or distribute models over physical systems.

The two entities plan to deploy two more such supercomputers, CG-2 and CG-3, in the US in early 2024. With a planned capacity of 36 exaFLOPs in total, this unprecedented supercomputing network will revolutionise the advancement of AI globally.

Today, in partnership with @CerebrasSystems, we are excited to announce the launch of Condor Galaxy, the world’s largest supercomputer for AI training, specifically optimized for Large Language Models (#LLMs) and #GenerativeAI pic.twitter.com/I3T0NGa7DH

— G42 (@G42ai) July 20, 2023

“Collaborating with Cerebras to rapidly deliver the world’s fastest AI training supercomputer and laying the foundation for interconnecting a constellation of these supercomputers across the world has been enormously exciting,” said Talal Alkaissi, CEO of G42 Cloud.

“This partnership brings together Cerebras’ extraordinary compute capability, together with G42’s multi-industry AI expertise.”

Alkaissi said plans to use the Cerebras systems to address society’s most pressing challenges across healthcare, energy and climate action.

The Cerebras-G42 partnership has already advanced state-of-the-art AI models in Arabic bilingual chat, healthcare and climate studies. CG-1 allows G42 and its cloud customers to train large, ground-breaking models quickly and easily to accelerate innovation.

G42 drives UAE’s innovation strategy

G42 is driving large-scale digital transformation initiatives in the UAE, Middle East region and beyond. The UAE was the first nation to appoint a Minister for AI in their federal government.

The pioneering action was followed by massive investments including the establishment of G42 research partner, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), the first post-graduate university in the world focused entirely on AI.

G42 said that training large models requires massive amounts of computing, massive datasets and specialised AI expertise. The Abu Dhabi-based tech conglomerate’s partnership with Cerebras delivers on all three of these elements. By building and commercialising some of the largest AI supercomputers in production, the two companies are democratising AI, enabling simple and easy access to the industry’s leading AI computing.

G42’s work with diverse datasets across healthcare, energy and environment will enable users of the systems to train new cutting-edge foundational models. The two AI firms are bringing together a team of hardware engineers, data engineers, AI scientists and industry specialists to deliver a full-service AI offering that combines AI and domain expertise to solve customers’ problems.

Read: Abu Dhabi’s G42 buys ByteDance stake at $220bn valuation