AIRR Expression of Interest is now opened

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of DSIT and UKRI I am getting in touch to highlight that a call has been published for researchers and startups to express interest in accessing the AI Research Resource (AIRR). This can be found at https://engagementhub.ukri.org/epsrc-researchinfrastructure/airr-eoi.

The AIRR comprises the Isambard-AI supercomputer in Bristol and Dawn in Cambridge. These are AI-optimised HPC platforms designed to support ambitious research projects. They provide access to advanced hardware, software, and expert support to enable researchers to tackle complex challenges and achieve groundbreaking results. The AIRR is intended to provide a step change in the compute available to UK researchers. As such, we would like researchers to start considering large-scale projects that can be run on these systems.

This expression of interest will be open to all UK-based researchers and innovators. Some potential projects focused on these might include:

  • Applying foundation models to particular scientific disciplines, such as climate science or biology
  • Developing autonomous scientists capable of generating novel hypotheses, coding up basic experiments, analysing results, and increasing research productivity
  • Exploring new paradigms in basic AI research such as in AI safety or novel architectures

However, we are open to a broad range of projects and are taking a loose definition of AI. This includes mixed workloads incorporating other techniques.

  • The initially the following resources will be available in the early access call:
    Isambard-AI phase 1 has 168 Nvidia Grace Hopper (GH200) superchips.
  • Dawn consists of 256 Dell XE9640 server nodes, each server has 4 Intel Data Centre Max 1550 GPUs. In total there are 1024 Intel GPUs.

From summer 2025, users will also be able to access Isambard-AI phase 2 through the early access call while the system is being tested, which has an additional 5,280 Nvidia Grace Hopper (GH200) superchips.

The expression of interest process will not have a fixed end date. Applications will be batched and assessed on a regular basis.

Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

Best regards
Richard