Nvidia Hints at New Supercomputer in Singapore
- By Paul Mah
- December 07, 2023
A second supercomputer could soon be built in Singapore, according to hints dropped by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang when he stopped by the nation-state as part of an Asian tour.
As reported by broadsheet The Business Times, Huang was in town to meet with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Jacqueline Poh, the managing director of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) to discuss potential “large investments” in AI in Singapore.
A larger supercomputer
“We have a supercomputer here already (and) we intend to build an even larger one,” Huang told reporters at a media roundtable in Singapore on Wednesday.
In the same report, it was noted that Nvidia will also discuss with EDB a potential investment in a “significant iconic site for AI” with access to “leading edge, state-of-the-art infrastructure” to help Singapore attain its goal of world leadership in AI.
Huang’s visit coincided with the unveiling of the National AI Strategy 2.0 (NAIS 2.0) earlier this week by Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. You can read about it here.
“It is essential that Singapore create your own AI ... it will encode, capture, it will learn the knowledge, the culture, the intelligence of the society ... once we have that Singapore foundation, then the rest of the industries, the rest of society, the rest of the companies, researchers can then build upon that,” said Huang.
Huang also highlighted an AI initiative that Nvidia is working on with Singapore’s IMDA – a localized multi-model large-language model (LLM) that can understand and manage context-switching between Singaporean and 10 other regional languages.
It is understood that this new LLM will be based on the open-sourced SEA-LION (Southeast Asian Languages in One Network) model created by AI Singapore.
The Singapore market is a notable driver of Nvidia’s revenue, whose recent SEC filing revealed that Singapore accounted for a staggering 15 percent, or US$2.7 billion for its latest quarter ending October. This revelation generated an international buzz last week.
However, Nvidia has since clarified that country revenue figures may not reflect actual shipments due to the companies headquartered in Singapore. This may see purchases billed in Singapore but the chips shipped elsewhere instead.
Much of the demand in Singapore is fuelled by cloud service providers supporting AI start-ups, according to Huang.
Image credit: Nvidia
Paul Mah
Paul Mah is the editor of DSAITrends, where he report on the latest developments in data science and AI. A former system administrator, programmer, and IT lecturer, he enjoys writing both code and prose.