448.3 Billion Won National Supercomputer No.6, Competition Among NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel

One Year After No-Bid Humiliation, Budget Increased by 50% for Re-Promotion
GPU Companies Also Preparing to Participate

The procurement process for the national supercomputer 6, which has been delayed for over a year due to funding shortages, will resume along with a budget increase. Nvidia, AMD, and Intel are expected to participate in the bidding for Supercomputer 6, which failed four times last year, causing embarrassment.

Lee Sik, Director of the National Supercomputing Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), said in a phone interview with Asia Economy on the 6th, "Supercomputer 6, which will be built centered on GPUs, may include participation not only from Nvidia but also from AMD and Intel." He added, "We have already been in communication with server and supercomputer manufacturers," and expressed hope that "this time, with the increased budget, competition will take place." Director Lee also cited the example of the Frontier supercomputer in the U.S., which ranks among the top in the global 'Top500' supercomputer list and is built solely with AMD chips.

The industry's response is similar. A representative from a GPU manufacturer also said, "We are interested in the Supercomputer 6 project," raising expectations not only for a successful bid but also for competition.

The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to initiate the bidding announcement process this month to actively proceed with the procurement of Supercomputer 6, which will have system performance of 600PF, storage capacity of 200PB, and network bandwidth exceeding 400Gbps. The performance of Supercomputer 6 will be more than 23 times faster in computational resources and have over 10 times larger storage capacity compared to Supercomputer 5. To this end, on the 4th, the Ministry held the National High-Performance Computing Committee meeting and increased the project budget for the 'National High-Performance Computer 6 Construction Plan' by 53%, from 292.9 billion KRW to 448.3 billion KRW, reflecting the rise in GPU market prices.

Supercomputer 6 was originally scheduled to begin service next year after selecting a construction contractor through last year’s bidding, but the project was canceled four times due to the sharp rise in GPU prices caused by the ChatGPT boom. Unlike previous supercomputers, Supercomputer 6 is planned to be built centered on GPUs rather than CPUs, making it directly affected by the GPU price surge and shortage. Concerns have grown that the delay of Supercomputer 6 will disrupt Korea’s scientific, industrial, and AI-related research.

During the year that the government focused on expanding the budget for Supercomputer 6, the industry landscape also changed. AMD and Intel have introduced new GPUs or entered the GPU business, forming a competitive structure alongside Nvidia’s ecosystem. With Nvidia shifting focus to its new 'Blackwell' GPU, access to existing H100 and H200 GPUs is also considered to have increased.

Some argue that Nvidia’s GPU should be prioritized due to the influence of the Nvidia CUDA ecosystem, as Nvidia can provide total solutions including software and networking. However, AMD and Intel have also prepared measures to support CUDA users, making them viable alternatives.