A new supercomputer named after a winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry is to help power artificial intelligence (AI) technology and scientific discoveries from a perch in the hills above the University of California, Berkeley, US federal officials said on Thursday.
US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced the project alongside executives from computer maker Dell Technologies and Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳).
The new computing system at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is to be called Doudna after Berkeley professor and biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020 for her work on the gene-editing technology CRISPR. It is due to switch on next year.
Photo: Reuters
“One of the key use cases will be genomics research,” said Dion Harris, a product executive in Nvidia’s AI and high-performance computing division. “It was basically just a nod to her contributions to the field.”
Dell is contracted with the energy department to build the computer, the latest to be housed at the Berkeley Lab’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Previous computers there have been named after other Nobel winners: Saul Perlmutter, an astrophysicist, and Gerty Cori, a biochemist.
In a separate report from Bloomberg, US senators Jim Banks and Elizabeth Warren are demanding answers from Huang on Nvidia’s reported plans to open a research facility in Shanghai, saying that the decision “raises significant national security and economic security concerns.”
Photo: AP
Banks and Warren were reacting to a Financial Times report that Nvidia is planning to open a research-and-development center in the Chinese city. The newspaper, citing people with knowledge of the matter, said the facility would be used for a potential expansion as well as existing employees, and that the company is advertising to hire AI talent in China.
Nvidia spokesperson Sarah Weinstein disputed the report, saying in an e-mailed statement that the company “is simply leasing a new space for existing employees, who need the room” in the post-COVID-19 return to work.
“The scope of work will remain unchanged,” she added.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, booked its first-ever profit from its Arizona subsidiary in the first half of this year, four years after operations began, a company financial statement showed. Wholly owned by TSMC, the Arizona unit contributed NT$4.52 billion (US$150.1 million) in net profit, compared with a loss of NT$4.34 billion a year earlier, the statement showed. The company attributed the turnaround to strong market demand and high factory utilization. The Arizona unit counts Apple Inc, Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc among its major customers. The firm’s first fab in Arizona began high-volume production
VOTE OF CONFIDENCE: The Japanese company is adding Intel to an investment portfolio that includes artificial intelligence linchpins Nvidia Corp and TSMC Softbank Group Corp agreed to buy US$2 billion of Intel Corp stock, a surprise deal to shore up a struggling US name while boosting its own chip ambitions. The Japanese company, which is adding Intel to an investment portfolio that includes artificial intelligence (AI) linchpins Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), is to pay US$23 a share — a small discount to Intel’s last close. Shares of the US chipmaker, which would issue new stock to Softbank, surged more than 5 percent in after-hours trading. Softbank’s stock fell as much as 5.4 percent on Tuesday in Tokyo, its
SETBACK: Apple’s India iPhone push has been disrupted after Foxconn recalled hundreds of Chinese engineers, amid Beijing’s attempts to curb tech transfers Apple Inc assembly partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has recalled about 300 Chinese engineers from a factory in India, the latest setback for the iPhone maker’s push to rapidly expand in the country. The extraction of Chinese workers from the factory of Yuzhan Technology (India) Private Ltd, a Hon Hai component unit, in southern Tamil Nadu state, is the second such move in a few months. The company has started flying in Taiwanese engineers to replace staff leaving, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named, as the
The prices of gasoline and diesel at domestic fuel stations are to rise NT$0.1 and NT$0.4 per liter this week respectively, after international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to rise to NT$27.3, NT$28.8 and NT$30.8 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to rise to NT$26.2 per liter at CPC stations and NT$26 at Formosa pumps, they said. The announcements came after international crude oil prices
RSS