Europe launches 'AI Factories' initiative in hopes of competing globally
- Reference: 1722335527
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/07/30/europe_ai_factories/
- Source link:
The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) Governing Board met at the end of last week to [1]amend its Work Program to include this AI Factories objective.
This follows the entry into force of EU Regulation 2024/1732, which expanded the EuroHPC JU's mandate to acquire and operate dedicated AI-optimized supercomputers to serve a diverse range of users including startups, small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), industry, academia, and the public sector.
[2]
It also follows on from an earlier decision by the European Commission that greater support was needed for "responsible" research and innovation in AI within the region to make available the bloc's HPC capacity to startups and others, providing "trustworthy" AI resources with which to train their models.
[3]
[4]
According to the Commission, AI Factories are envisioned as "dynamic ecosystems" that bring together all the necessary ingredients – compute power, data, and talent – to create cutting-edge generative AI models, so it isn't just about making a supercomputer available and telling people to get on with it.
The ultimate goal for these AI Factories is that they will serve as hubs able to drive advances in AI across various key domains, from health to energy, manufacturing to meteorology, it said.
[5]
To get there, the EuroHPC JU says that its AI Factories approach aims to create a one-stop shop for startups, SMEs, and scientific users to facilitate access to services as well as skill development and support.
In addition, an AI Factory will also be able to apply for a grant to develop an optional system/partition focused on the development of experimental AI-optimized supercomputing platforms. The goal of such platforms would be to stimulate the development and design of a wide range of technologies for AI-ready supercomputers.
The EuroHPC JU says it will kick off a two-pronged approach to delivering AI Factories from September. One will be a call for new hosting agreements for the acquisition of a new AI supercomputer, or for an upgraded supercomputer in the case applicants aim to upgrade an existing EuroHPC supercomputer to have AI capabilities.
[6]India and EU finally advance HPC collaboration project hatched in 2022
[7]Europe's first exascale system will be slotted into modular containerized datacenter
[8]Atos subsidiary Eviden scores contract win in Europe's first exascale system
[9]Europe sets out to squeeze every last drop of power from supercomputers
This track will be implemented via a permanent Call for Expression of Interest for new hosts to deploy and operate an AI Factory.
According to the EuroHPC JU, grants will be offered to cover the operational costs of the supercomputers, as well as to support AI Factory activities and services.
[10]
The second prong is aimed at entities that already host a EuroHPC supercomputer capable of training large-scale, general-purpose AI models and emerging AI applications. It will also offer grants to support AI Factory activities.
All of this depends upon funding, and the EU's financial contribution for acquiring new or upgraded EuroHPC AI supercomputers is estimated at €400 million ($433 million) for 2024. Up to €800 million ($866 million) will be committed by the EU until 2027, according to EuroHPC, subject to budget availability from the Digital Europe program funds.
But the EU isn't the only proponent of AI Factories. Leading GPU manufacturer Nvidia is also understandably keen on pushing the concept.
At Computex in Taipei in June, CEO Jensen Huang described these as datacenters specially built to handle the most computationally intensive AI processing tasks.
"The next industrial revolution has begun. Companies and countries are partnering with Nvidia to shift the trillion-dollar traditional datacenters to accelerated computing and build a new type of datacenter – AI Factories – to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence," he opined.
Speaking in Japan [11]earlier this month , Huang claimed: "The AI Factory will become the bedrock of modern economies across the world."
Or for as long as industry is prepared to keep pumping billions into AI, of course. ®
Get our [12]Tech Resources
[1] https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/eurohpc-joint-undertaking-amends-work-programme-incorporate-new-ai-factory-pillar-2024-07-26_en
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZqkOJwyKk6Q5QOr4FRG6nAAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZqkOJwyKk6Q5QOr4FRG6nAAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZqkOJwyKk6Q5QOr4FRG6nAAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZqkOJwyKk6Q5QOr4FRG6nAAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/09/india_eu_hpc_collaboration/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/23/modular_containerized_datacenter_to_hold/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/04/atos_subsidiary_eviden_contract/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/06/eurohpc_inno4scale/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZqkOJwyKk6Q5QOr4FRG6nAAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/12/hpe_to_build_supercomputer_to/
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: AI factories
Don't worry, it will be so covered with EU red tape that nothing will be achieved.
Re: AI factories
@AMBxx
Didnt the reg do a few stories about the EU already piling on the regs for AI?
Anyone Remember Japan's "Software Factories"?
I thought not. It was a 1990s thing, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and others were bandwagoneering for this new great thing which was the wave of the future, and going to be the salvation ("salivation"?) of the software industry.
It was all fur and feathers, but no meat.
Icon for, "seen this before."
+++ EU TRIGGER WARNING +++
Attention foaming gammon and brexiters: This article mentions the EU that you are no longer members ....
.... ah shit.
Too late.
Carry on frothing.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, if not destined to be a unique competitive West confection, .....
..... devoid of exhilarating peer pressure from an almighty Eastern concoction, an AI Factory leader/chief/CTO/CEO/Mega MetaDataBase Boss will also be able to apply for a grant to develop an optional system/partition focused on the development of experimental AI-optimized supercomputing platforms with the stealthy silent goal of such platforms being to stimulate the development and design of a wide range of technologies for AI-ready takeover and makeover of supercomputers.
Methinks however, the likelihood of that being a field of endeavour and obscene enrichment for no more than one is an absolutely ridiculous and risible notion.
Too much hype, waste of public money and energy waste through duplication of processing.
A better alternative to dedicated Cloud processing may be to distribute AI processing across the net using torrenting networks. All users do a bit of processing for each other. Competing front ends can handle the same data differently, rather than everyone doing everything on their own clouds.
Just as with distributed searches, data can be processed and held to be of use to more than one user/AI app, across the distributed network, or on sites that hold content. As AI should really be attributed to sources, attributing to websites acts as a user draw through AI-related search, and as a form of meta ad.
Distributed search should be the basis for distributed AI processing, but nobody is really doing distributed search. Too much innovative stuff is not being done, as GAFA is run by lawyers.
Mass Producing Humonguosly Hungry AI
... is not a business plan, although it is a money funneling plan. To quote Goldman-Sachs ... despite these concerns and constraints, we still see room for the AI theme to
run, either because AI starts to deliver on its promise, or because bubbles take a long time to burst. [GEN AI: TOO MUCH SPEND,
TOO LITTLE BENEFIT? June 25, 2024] .
How could AI start to deliver on its promise? For the sake of argument, if we hold the results of current generative AI constant and consider energy usage as the variable to optimize, then even current AI ability could become profitable - and that would be a huge, HUGE, milestone. For that to happen ASAP it should be prioritized as a goal - that's something the EU can do and can use a measuring stick for progress, thereby leapfrogging the US hypester crowd (who are betting that AI will be so expensive to run that only the big boys can play). That's an R&D story much better than "AI factory". Although application of AI -to- factories should be part of it. It most certainly is already part of it in China.
I use the github copilot $10/mo + donating my soul to the machine, and it's a good deal (my soul isn't worth much). It's scary to think how much MS is losing on that. Well - not that scary, but without AI cost performance improvement $10/mo copilot is eventually either going to be dumbed-down or bumped up to $100/mo, or both. [Microsoft reportedly is losing lots of money per user on GitHub Copilot, neowin dot net, Oct. 2023 ]
There is no such thing as AI.
There is no such thing as an AI Factory.
... so what the fsck are these things? I bet they are completely empty on the inside and used entirely to look impressive in order to loosen money from investors.
AI factories
There where they build artificial humans.
Haven't we heard and seen that one in science fiction before? I also recall that it did not end well... for us humans.