The University of Florida (UF) has received the components for its forthcoming HiPerGator AI 2.0 supercomputer.
According to UF, the new system will be seven to ten times faster than the university's current HiPerGator cluster.
Set to be housed at the university’s data center in Gainesville, the $24 million Nvidia DGX-based machine is comprised of 63 Nvidia DGX B200 systems, each of which contains eight Nvidia Blackwell GPUs. UF is one of the first higher education institutions in the world to host an Nvidia Blackwell-powered AI supercomputer, and the first in the US.
The original HiPerGator AI cluster was installed by the university in 2021, and the 17.2 petaflops system was ranked 77th on the most recent edition of the Top500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
While the full specifications of the upgraded HiPerGator AI cluster haven’t been revealed, one Nvidia DGX B200 system achieves 72 petaflops of training and 144 petaflops of inference performance.
More than 60 percent of the university’s research projects rely on HiPerGator, including the university’s medical analytics tool GatorTron which has been developed in partnership with Nvidia. UF said that in the past year, the system supported nearly 7,000 users from across the Southeast and more than 33 million research requests.
“HiPerGator is at the center of our infusion of AI across the curriculum, supporting the UF community with state-of-the-art technology and training resources,” said Joe Glover, UF’s interim provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “UF’s commitment to comprehensive AI education prepares our students with the skills and AI knowledge needed to succeed in our rapidly transforming workforce.”
Nvidia co-founder and University of Florida alum Chris Malachowsky added: “The University of Florida’s commitment to AI and high-performance computing has set a new standard for academic excellence.
“By being the first university in the country to adopt an Nvidia DGX SuperPOD powered by Blackwell, UF will have an incredible AI supercomputing infrastructure to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges.”
Assembly of the HiPerGator AI 2.0 supercomputer is scheduled to take place later this month.
