Nvidia Builds the 7th Fastest Supercomputer in Just 4 Weeks

Following the completion of the Selene supercomputer, a design assembled by Nvidia, while representing the 7th most powerful supercomputer in the world, this (perhaps surprisingly) isn’t the most remarkable thing about it. Yes, it’s pretty amazingly strong in terms of computing output, but what if I told you that Nvidia had managed to build it, during COVID-19 restrictions, in just under 4 weeks?…

Well, in a report via TechSpot, that’s exactly what happened and, when you check out some of its specifications, it gets even more impressive!

Selene Supercomputer – Nvidia Smashes it Out in Style

With the Selene utilizing Nvidia’s GPU-accelerated DGX SuperPOD, a huge benefit seen from this is that it doesn’t require custom-CPU chipset designs. More so, however, with this technology being commercially available (albeit, very expensive) it is far more accessible and ‘straight-forward’ to integrate into a design.

So, what kind of power does this thing have? Well, with 560 AMD Epyc 7742 CPUs and 2240 Nvidia A100 GPUs, in theory, this can achieve a computing performance level of just under 35,000 teraflops! a figure that, overall, makes it the 7th most powerful supercomputer in the world.

What Do We Think?

While the design and specifications are clearly very impressive, the most insane aspect is that the apparent ‘ease’ of design. This meant that Nvidia was able to build this in just under 4 weeks! With this new system looking specifically to make supercomputer designs more straight-forward and modular, however, while it’s doubtful such a design would ever top the list (as those ones are nearly always bespoke custom designed) this could, in a very short space of time, quickly solve a lot of companies supercomputer needs!

Better still, while clearly having a lot of processing grunt, this design has also become recognized as the 2nd-most efficient (in terms of energy required to performance) in the world! – In a nutshell, Nvidia may have (somewhat quietly) completely changed the face of the future of supercomputing here and we are highly impressed!

What do you think? Will this run Crysis? – Let us know in the comments!