The University at Albany is now home to one of the most advanced AI supercomputers in the country.
The new $16.5-million dollar AI system at UAlbany's Uptown Campus is said to be the most capable AI supercomputer within the SUNY system and a central pillar of the university's two-year old AI Plus initiative. UAlbany President Havidán Rodríguez calls it "one of the most advanced AI supercomputers at a U.S. university."
"Every student, regardless of their discipline, has access to courses about AI," said Rodríguez. "To support this initiative, we embarked on the largest cluster hire in the university's history, bringing on 27 new faculty members with AI expertise across disciplines in each of our schools and colleges. The NVIDIA AI supercomputer we are unveiling today marks the next step in our AI journey. It would expand our university's computing power and enable UAlbany researchers to tackle complex problems and advance the public good. We are doing critically important work with real societal impacts."
In 2022, UAlbany received $75 million from the state to expand supercomputing initiatives.
Governor Kathy Hochul hails UAlbany’s AI system as "a preview of what’s to come" under her $400 million Empire AI initiative. The Democrat adds the supercomputer gives a holistic push to integrate teaching and learning about AI across every college, school and major.
"Whoever dominates the AI industry will dominate the next chapter of human history, and we know why superpowers like China are working overtime to dominate and build the next generation of supercomputers capable of making mass technological strides. But here in the United States, those supercomputers also exist, and until today, they had been in the hands of private companies, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft. Imagine all the good that can be done when that same power is in the hands of institutions like University of Albany," Hochul said.
Chancellor John King says the supercomputer will empower inter-campus collaborations that will serve the entire SUNY system.
"We always say there's a place for every New Yorker at SUNY, and I would also argue there is a way for AI to advantage every New Yorker, if it is developed and deployed properly. UAlbany's AI Plus Initiative is a model for how campuses can approach and develop AI that is for everyone, serves everyone, delivers across every discipline. Helps us teach, helps us learn, helps us discover and helps us come together," said King.
24 NVIDIA DGX systems are slotted in server cabinets in the University’s Data Center. They contain 192 NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs, networked with about three miles of fiber-optic cabling. UAlbany says calculations that would have typically taken weeks on legacy systems can now be completed in days, and tasks that would have taken days can now be completed in hours.
