One of higher education’s fastest supercomputers arrives at the University of Florida; assembly begins later this month

The first components of HiPerGator AI 2.0, expected to be one of the country’s fastest university-owned supercomputers, arrived last week at the University of Florida’s Data Center in Gainesville, marking a major milestone in UF’s push to position itself as a national leader in AI education and research.  

The $24 million acquisition of the NVIDIA DGX systems is a highly anticipated step in a long-standing engagement between the two organizations that has resulted in a comprehensive push to integrate AI education and research across every academic discipline at UF.  

The new machine, known as the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, will propel UF’s supercomputing abilities to new heights, restore its position as home to one of the world’s top supercomputers, and support UF’s goal to provide a national model for workforce development that will advance the United States’ global leadership in AI. A team of about a dozen experts will install the supercomputer, comprising 63 NVIDIA DGX B200 systems, and powered by 504 NVIDIA Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs). 

UF alum and NVIDIA cofounder Chris Malachowsky, a key partner and donor in UF’s AI initiative, is expected to be present for the unveiling of the new HiPerGator AI 2.0 supercomputer, which is estimated to be seven to 10 times faster than the current HiPerGator cluster. UF is one of the world’s first higher education institutions to host an NVIDIA Blackwell-powered AI supercomputer.

“The University of Florida’s commitment to AI and high-performance computing has set a new standard for academic excellence,” said Malachowsky. “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.” 

UF’s extraordinary computing infrastructure has played a key role in the university’s reputation, faculty recruitment and retention, and fast-rising research prowess. This upgrade of UF’s supercomputer will continue the evolution from HiPerGator 1.0 (2013-2021) to HiPerGator 2.0 (2015) to HiPerGator 3.0 (2021) and HiPerGator AI (2021), each version faster and more powerful than the last. Supported projects include GatorTron™, developed in partnership with NVIDIA, which analyzes decades of medical records that have been stripped of personally identifying information. The goal is to train supercomputers to generate billions of simulated medical records and develop a new medical AI tool, GatorTronGPT, that functions similarly to ChatGPT.  More than 60% of UF’s $1.26 billion annual budget for research goes toward projects that rely on HiPerGator.

With more than 100 new AI faculty and 230 AI and data science courses, HiPerGator’s exceptional computational capabilities support a wide range of teaching and research advances in areas from engineering and medicine to history and astronomy. 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.” 

Projects on HiPerGator AI will be uninterrupted during the installation, seamlessly transitioning parts of the workload to the NVIDIA DGX Cloud, a fully managed AI platform that offers short-term access to large compute clusters, for the installation period before they are loaded into the new system. Early users are expected to access the new system starting in the fall. 

"HiPerGator is essential to UF's multidisciplinary initiatives and advancements in academic and research achievements," said Elias G. Eldayrie, UF's vice president and chief information officer. "This fourth-generation upgrade of HiPerGator will elevate UF's AI research, accelerate the integration of AI across the curriculum, and solidify UF's status as the AI university."