Japan is Building a $1B AI Supercomputer with NVIDIA

The Japan National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) is significantly enhancing its AI research capabilities with the development of the AI Bridging Cloud Infrastructure 3.0 supercomputer (ABCI 3.0), powered by NVIDIA H200 GPUs and Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking.

Advancing Japan’s AI sovereignty and competitiveness: AIST, one of Japan’s largest public research organizations, is upgrading to ABCI 3.0 to bolster the country’s AI research and development capabilities:

• The initiative is part of a $1 billion investment by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) to strengthen computing resources and support cloud AI computing.
• ABCI 3.0 aims to enhance Japan’s technological independence and global competitiveness in AI development, serving as a foundation for future innovation.

Collaboration with NVIDIA and HPE: AIST is working closely with NVIDIA and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to develop the state-of-the-art AI supercomputer:

• NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang met with Japanese leaders last year, pledging to collaborate on AI research and provide support, training, and education.
• ABCI 3.0 will feature thousands of NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs and NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking for superior performance and scalability.

Unmatched computing performance and efficiency: The ABCI 3.0 supercomputer will offer unprecedented computational capabilities for AI research and development:

• The system will provide 6 AI exaflops of computing capacity and 410 double-precision petaflops of general computing capacity.
• Each node will be equipped with 8 NVLink-connected H200 GPUs, offering over 140 gigabytes of HBM3e memory and 4.8 terabytes per second of memory bandwidth.
• NVIDIA H200 GPUs are 15 times more energy-efficient than ABCI’s previous-generation architecture for AI workloads like large language model token generation.

Accelerating joint AI research and development: ABCI 3.0 will serve as a platform to advance AI collaboration between industries, academia, and governments:

• The supercomputer’s world-class computing and data processing power will help reduce the time and costs of developing next-generation AI technologies.
• By subsidizing AI supercomputer development, Japan aims to position itself as a leader in the global AI landscape and accelerate the use of generative AI.

Looking ahead: The ABCI 3.0 supercomputer represents a significant step forward in Japan’s AI research and development capabilities, underscoring the country’s commitment to technological sovereignty and global competitiveness. As the system comes online later this year, it will provide a powerful foundation for advancing AI innovation and collaboration across industries, academia, and government.