Nvidia Builds Supercomputer To Accelerate COVID-19 Vaccine Research

Logo Nvidia (Image by StockSnap from Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Graphics chip developer Nvidia plans to develop a giant supercomputer in the UK. The supercomputer will use artificial intelligence (AI) to assist researchers in creating a vaccine for COVID-19.

Launching from Reuters, in developing this supercomputer, Nvidia collaborated with two pharmaceutical companies, namely GSK and AstraZenca. The computer, called the Cambridge-1, is expected to be up and running later this year in the UK.

The supercomputer is equipped with the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD system capable of delivering more than 400 petaflops of AI performance. That means the computer ranks 29th in the list of the top 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.

Cambridge is also home to ARM, a British chip designer, which Nvidia has approved to buy from Japan's SoftBank for $ 40 billion. If this supercomputer is successful, Nvidia intends to build an AI Center of Excellence in Cambridge.

Later this ARM-based supercomputer will serve as a collaborative center for researchers, scientists and startups throughout the UK. A separate Cambridge-1 supercomputer will be available to researchers from industry and academia.

"The Cambridge-1 supercomputer will serve as a center of innovation for the UK, and will furthermore be the place for breakthroughs being made by researchers in health and drug discovery," said Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang.

PC Gamers, let's put those GPUs to work. Join us and our friends at @OfficialPCMR in supporting folding @ home and donating unused GPU computing power to fight against COVID-19! Learn more → https://t.co/EQE4u7xTZT pic.twitter.com/uO0ZCq8PEv

- NVIDIA GeForce (@NVIDIAGeForce) March 13, 2020

Prior to this, Nvidia had also uploaded a post on Twitter and asked PC gamers around the world to help fight the corona virus. You do this by sharing the results of the GPU Clock that gamers have for the purposes of research and analysis of the corona vaccine.

GPU clock also known as engine clock, GPU clock speed shows how fast the core of a graphics processing unit (GPU) is. Machine clocks are measured in megahertz (MHz), where one MHz equals one million hertz.