G42 partners with Cerebras to to launch ‎world’s largest AI training supercomputer ‎network

G42, the UAE-based technology holding group, has partnered with Cerebras Systems, a pioneer in accelerating generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), to launch Condor Galaxy, a network of nine interconnected supercomputers, offering a new approach to AI compute that aims to significantly reduce AI model training time. The launch revolutionises AI and helps to address global concerns, including energy and sustainability, supporting Abu Dhabi’s climate effort and digital transformation initiatives.

The first AI supercomputer on this network, Condor Galaxy 1 (CG-1), has 4 exaFLOPs and 54 million cores. Cerebras and G42 are planning to deploy two more such supercomputers, CG-2 and CG-3, in the US in early 2024. With a planned capacity of 36 exaFLOPs in total, this unprecedented supercomputing network will revolutionise the advancement of AI globally.

Talal Alkaissi, CEO of G42 Cloud, a subsidiary of G42, said: “Collaborating with Cerebras to rapidly deliver the world’s fastest AI training supercomputer and laying the foundation for interconnecting a constellation of these supercomputers across the world has been enormously exciting. This partnership brings together Cerebras’ extraordinary compute capabilities, together with G42’s multi-industry AI expertise. G42 and Cerebras’ shared vision is that Condor Galaxy will be used to address society’s most pressing challenges across healthcare, energy, climate action and more.”

Located in Santa Clara, California, CG-1 links 64 Cerebras CS-2 systems together into a single, easy-to-use AI supercomputer, with an AI training capacity of 4 exaFLOPs. Cerebras and G42 offer CG-1 as a cloud service, allowing customers to enjoy the performance of an AI supercomputer without having to manage or distribute models over physical systems.

CG-1 is the first time Cerebras has partnered not only to build a dedicated AI supercomputer but also to manage and operate it. CG-1 is designed to enable G42 and its cloud customers to train large, ground-breaking models quickly and easily, thereby accelerating innovation. The Cerebras-G42 strategic partnership has already advanced state-of-the-art AI models in Arabic bilingual chat, healthcare and climate studies. 

Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras Systems, said: “Delivering 4 exaFLOPs of AI compute at FP 16, CG-1 dramatically reduces AI training timelines while eliminating the pain of distributed compute. Many cloud companies have announced massive GPU clusters that cost billions of dollars to build, but that are extremely difficult to use. Distributing a single model over thousands of tiny GPUs takes months of time from dozens of people with rare expertise. CG-1 eliminates this challenge. Setting up a generative AI model takes minutes, not months and can be done by a single person. CG-1 is the first of three 4 exaFLOP AI supercomputers to be deployed across the US over the next year, together with G42, we plan to expand this deployment and stand up a staggering 36 exaFLOPs of efficient, purpose-built AI compute.”

A leading AI and cloud computing company based in Abu Dhabi, G42 is driving large-scale digital transformation initiatives globally. The UAE was the first nation to appoint a Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, followed by various key investments by the emirate, including the establishment of G42 research partner, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), the first post-graduate university in the world focused entirely on AI.

Training large models requires vast amounts of compute, datasets, and specialised AI expertise. The partnership between G42 and Cerebras delivers on all three elements. With the Condor Galaxy supercomputing network, the two companies are democratising AI, enabling simple and easy access to the industry’s leading AI compute. G42’s work with diverse datasets across healthcare, energy and climate studies will enable users of the systems to train new cutting-edge foundational models. Cerebras and G42 bring together a team of hardware engineers, data engineers, AI scientists, and industry specialists to deliver a full-service AI offering to solve customers’ problems. This combination will produce ground-breaking results and turbo charge hundreds of AI projects globally.

Forrest Norrod, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Data Centre Solutions Business Group of AMD, said: “AMD is committed to accelerating AI with cutting edge high-performance computing processors and adaptive computing products as well as through collaborations with innovative companies like Cerebras that share our vision of pervasive AI. Driven by more than 70,000 AMD EPYC processor cores, Cerebras’ Condor Galaxy 1 will make accessible vast computational resources for researchers and enterprises as they push AI forward.”

CG-1 offers native support for training with long sequence lengths, up to 50,000 tokens out of the box, without any special software libraries. Programing CG-1 is done entirely without complex distributed programming languages, meaning even the largest models can be run without weeks or months spent distributing work over thousands of GPUs.

Located at Colovore, a high-performance colocation facility in Santa Clara, California, CG-1 is operated by Cerebras. Each Cerebras CS-2 system is designed, packaged, manufactured, tested, and integrated in the US; Cerebras is the only AI hardware company to package processors and manufacture AI systems in the US.

CG-1 is the first of three 4 exaFLOP AI supercomputers (CG-1, CG-2, and CG-3), built and located in the US by Cerebras and G42. The three AI supercomputers will be interconnected in a 12 exaFLOP, 162 million core distributed AI supercomputer consisting of 192 Cerebras CS-2s and fed by more than 218,000 high performance AMD EPYC CPU cores. G42 and Cerebras plan to bring online six additional Condor Galaxy supercomputers in 2024, bringing the total compute power to 36 exaFLOPs.