{"id":440857,"date":"2026-01-27T14:24:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T14:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/440857\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T14:24:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T14:24:12","slug":"cambridges-zenith-ai-supercomputer-gets-36m-from-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/440857\/","title":{"rendered":"Cambridge’s Zenith AI supercomputer gets \u00a336m from government"},"content":{"rendered":"

Louise Parryand<\/p>\n

David Webster,University of Cambridge<\/p>\n

\"DavidDavid Webster\/BBC<\/p>\n

Dr Paul Calleja says the Dawn system will be upgraded and used for “research, development and transformation of public sector services”<\/p>\n

One of the UK’s most powerful supercomputers is being given a \u00a336m upgrade by the government as part of further investment in artificial intelligence (AI).<\/p>\n

The Dawn supercomputer in Cambridge, which has already supported more than 350 projects for free, will see its power boosted sixfold.<\/p>\n

The system is used for public projects such as helping to reduce NHS waiting lists and developing new tools to tackle climate change, although AI requires vast amounts of energy.<\/p>\n

Professor Sir John Aston, at the University of Cambridge, said: “This investment will give researchers, clinicians and innovators the tools they need to drive breakthroughs that improve public services.”<\/p>\n

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said the funding would allow British researchers and tech companies to “develop the AI tools of the future”.<\/p>\n

\"PAPA Media<\/p>\n

It is hoped that the AI system will help produce medical breakthroughs and reduce waiting times in the NHS<\/p>\n

The AI Research Resource (AIRR) is a national programme giving free access to high-powered computing of the kind usually reserved for big tech corporations.<\/p>\n

As part of this, UK scientists have been using Dawn – and the Isambard supercomputer in Bristol<\/a> – to develop AI tools that could speed up personalised cancer vaccines, working out exactly which parts of a tumour to target.<\/p>\n

Dawn’s next iteration will be known as Zenith, with the extra AI chips and computing power available by the Spring.<\/p>\n

The project is developed in collaboration with Dell, AMD and Stack HPC.<\/p>\n

The government hopes it will create “everyday benefits” such as speedier medical diagnosis and better climate modelling to help prepare for extreme weather.<\/p>\n

\"PAPA Media<\/p>\n

The Prince of Wales recently visited the sister project to Dawn and Zenith – Isambard supercomputer in Bristol <\/p>\n

“AI really shortcuts a lot of the really complex computational elements in science, allowing us to do things we couldn’t do before,” said Dr Paul Calleja, director of research computing services at the university.<\/p>\n

He explained that Dawn requires 50 engineers to keep it ticking over, with five always in the data centre \u2013 wearing ear protectors to filter out the loud noise.<\/p>\n

“It does take a lot of hands-on skill to keep a machine like this running,” he said.<\/p>\n

Dawn consumes 1 megawatt of power, and Calleja said “it consumes the same network capacity as around 20% of London’s broadband”.<\/p>\n

However, its water use is more modest \u2013 about the same amount as 20 houses.<\/p>\n

He believed it was worth the use of resources and added: “Power efficiency is our number one driver. We get an awful lot of output for that power and water use.<\/p>\n

“We need AI so we can solve some of our most complex scientific, medical and technical problems.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Louise Parryand David Webster,University of Cambridge David Webster\/BBC Dr Paul Calleja says the Dawn system will be upgraded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-440857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}