Nvidia builds ‘Israel-1’ AI supercomputer, claims to have ended digital divide

The world is at a ‘tipping point of a new computing era’, Nvidia Group has noted at a recent conference at the Computex Forum in Taipei. The company CEO Jensen Huang has claimed ‘We have closed the digital divide. Everyone is a programmer now – you just have to say something to the computer’. As one of the leading providers of chips and computing systems for artificial intelligence (AI), Nvidia anticipates that the widespread adoption of AI will revolutionise every industry, propelled by its user-friendly nature.

To meet the surging demand for AI applications, Nvidia is building a supercomputer called ‘Israel-1’. Nvidia works with 800 startups in Israel and tens of thousands of software engineers. The system is expected to become the fastest AI computer with a delivery performance of up to eight exaflops. One exaflop can perform 1 quintillion – or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 – calculations per second. Earlier this year, Nvidia announced its cooperation with the University of Bristol (UK) to build a new supercomputer using a new Nvidia chip that would compete with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. ChatGPT by OpenAI is among the AI systems, built with thousands of Nvidia GPUs.