On Monday, Nvidia Corp, the globally leading chip company, announced its plans to build Israel’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer to cater to the escalating demand for AI applications.

The supercomputer, Israel-1, is a cloud-based system expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars and will become partly operational by the end of 2023. Gilad Shainer, Nvidia’s senior vice president, noted that the company has collaborated with around 800 startups and tens of thousands of software engineers in Israel.

The highly anticipated system is expected to deliver performance up to eight exaflops of AI computing, potentially making it one of the world’s fastest AI supercomputers. In computing terms, one exaflop can perform 1 quintillion (or a billion–billion) calculations every second.

Shainer emphasized the immense significance of AI, labeling it as the “most crucial technology in our lifetime.” He added that developing AI and generative AI applications necessitates large graphics processing units (GPUs).

Shainer also explained how companies in Israel would benefit from having access to a supercomputer that is currently not available to them. The large-scale system is designed to expedite training, aid in constructing frameworks, and offer solutions to more complex problems.