Amazon and Google have not been chosen to operate the Israeli supercomputer. The Israel Innovation Authority, which held talks with both tech giants on building the supercomputer, yesterday issued a call for proposals for other companies to file bids of up to NIS 290 million, and be awarded a grant of NIS 160 million.
The Innovation Authority tried to persuade Amazon and Googler to bid for the tender by virtue of being the winners of the government Nimbus cloud tender. “Globes” has learned that Google has concluded that the tender is not economically worthwhile at this stage and did not move forward to the later stages of the tender. Amazon, apparently, competed but was not selected for various reasons.
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According to the requirements of the Innovation Authority, the winner of the tender will build a supercomputer, which is a cluster of interconnected computing servers that together perform calculations that simple computers have difficulty with – and which contains at least a thousand advanced graphics accelerators from Nvidia, Intel, or AMD.
In order to not necessarily be associated with Nvidia, the Innovation Authority allows franchisees to purchase not only H100 t processors, Nvidia’s popular accelerator, but also Intel’s Gaudi 3 or AMD’s MI300X.
Supercomputers are capable of performing calculations that simple computers or servers have difficulty with – such as calculating formulas for drug development, simulating a nuclear test or 3D imaging of an urban environment for training autonomous cars. The supercomputer will serve Israeli academia and the local tech industry.
Another supercomputer already operates in Israel, Nvidia’s Israel 1, but it is still restricted only to internal operations, although it may open to industry within the next year.
The Innovation Authority is now hoping that additional entities such as cloud providers or server farm owners will take up the challenge. It could be that companies such as Oracle and Microsoft, who failed to win the Nimbus cloud tender, may find themselves competing for this much smaller government tender. Server farm operators such as Med1, Server Farm or Sheinfeld Engineering may also respond to the challenge.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on December 30, 2024
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