[Exclusive] Supercom 6th Unit to Introduce 8,800 Latest NVIDIA GPUs

Bidding for the Nation's 6th Supercomputer Succeeds
Latest NVIDIA Chips to Be Introduced

NVIDIA's new graphics processing units (GPUs) will be introduced in large quantities to government-operated supercomputers.

NVIDIA GH200 Superchip. Photo by NVIDIA

According to the information technology industry and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) on the 19th, two bids were submitted for the nation's 6th supercomputer, which closed the day before: Cray (HP) and Lenovo (SKC&C·Korea IBM). The first bid on the 6th only had HP participating, resulting in a failed sole bid, but this time, with two companies participating, competitive bidding became possible. KISTI plans to select the final company and complete the contract by the end of April, with service scheduled for the first half of next year.

Lee Sik, the director of KISTI, welcomed the news, saying, "We can finally complete the construction of the nation's 6th supercomputer." The reason for his enthusiasm is that this project had been canceled five times due to the sharp rise in GPU prices. The initial budget of 292.9 billion KRW in 2022 had increased to 448.3 billion KRW last year.

This project attracted attention regarding NVIDIA's participation. Given that South Korea currently owns only 2,000 advanced GPUs, the introduction of 8,800 GPUs is seen as a precedent that could open the door for large-scale GPU procurement projects such as national AI data centers.

An industry insider said, "Both HP and Lenovo are known to be using NVIDIA chips." HP proposed the 'GH200 Grace Hopper' superchip, which integrates NVIDIA GPUs with ARM-based CPUs, while Lenovo proposed the H100. Regardless of which is selected, it means that NVIDIA's latest GPUs will be introduced.

Nuri, the 5th National Supercomputer. Photo by KISTI

KISTI initially planned to procure 8,800 GPUs, but they stated that if high-performance GPUs meeting performance targets are introduced, the number of units procured may decrease. Both companies used AMD CPUs. Intel CPUs reportedly did not meet the performance requirements set by KISTI and thus did not participate in the bidding.

Although the procurement for the 6th supercomputer has finally been realized, there is a strong call to promptly complete the project, which was delayed due to the surge in GPU prices in the artificial intelligence (AI) era, and to actively support national research. The 5th supercomputer, 'Nurion,' used by most domestic researchers, has already reached its limits, and its performance ranking has significantly dropped, leading to growing dissatisfaction among researchers in companies and universities. Ahead of the 6th supercomputer's introduction, KISTI is reorganizing its structure centered on the National Supercomputing Center to explore roles suitable for the AI era.