Cerebras 4 Exaflop AI Training Supercomputer

Cerebras Systems and G42, the UAE-based technology holding group, announced Condor Galaxy, a network of nine interconnected supercomputers, offering a new approach to AI compute that promises to significantly reduce AI model training time. The first AI supercomputer on this network, Condor Galaxy 1 (CG-1), has 4 exaFLOPs and 54 million cores. Cerebras and G42 are planning to deploy two more such supercomputers, CG-2 and CG-3, in the U.S. in early 2024. With a planned capacity of 36 exaFLOPs in total, this unprecedented supercomputing network will revolutionize the advancement of AI globally.

CG-1 links 64 Cerebras CS-2 systems together into a single, easy-to-use AI supercomputer, with an AI training capacity of 4 exaFLOPs. Cerebras and G42 offer CG-1 as a cloud service, allowing customers to enjoy the performance of an AI supercomputer without having to manage or distribute models over physical systems.

Cerebras CS-2 costs several million dollars. The pricing of the CS-2 wafer chip supercomputer is not disclosed. G42 has $800 million in funding. If the CS-2 cost $10 million then 64 of them would cost $640 million. If the CS-2 cost $5 million each then 64 of them would cost $320 million. I would guess that the CG-1 needs $200-400 million of funding.

A 64 core AMD Epyc costs about $8000. 1000 of those would cost $8 million.

CG-1 is the first time Cerebras has partnered not only to build a dedicated AI supercomputer but also to manage and operate it. CG-1 is designed to enable G42 and its cloud customers to train large, ground-breaking models quickly and easily, thereby accelerating innovation. The Cerebras-G42 strategic partnership has already advanced state-of-the-art AI models in Arabic bilingual chat, healthcare and climate studies.

“Delivering 4 exaFLOPs of AI compute at FP 16, CG-1 dramatically reduces AI training timelines while eliminating the pain of distributed compute,” said Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras Systems. “Many cloud companies have announced massive GPU clusters that cost billions of dollars to build, but that are extremely difficult to use. Distributing a single model over thousands of tiny GPUs takes months of time from dozens of people with rare expertise. CG-1 eliminates this challenge. Setting up a generative AI model takes minutes, not months and can be done by a single person. CG-1 is the first of three 4 exaFLOP AI supercomputers to be deployed across the U.S. Over the next year, together with G42, we plan to expand this deployment and stand up a staggering 36 exaFLOPs of efficient, purpose-built AI compute.”

CG-1 is the first of three 4 exaFLOP AI supercomputers (CG-1, CG-2, and CG-3), built and located in the U.S. by Cerebras and G42 in partnership. These three AI supercomputers will be interconnected in a 12 exaFLOP, 162 million core distributed AI supercomputer consisting of 192 Cerebras CS-2s and fed by more than 218,000 high performance AMD EPYC CPU cores. G42 and Cerebras plan to bring online six additional Condor Galaxy supercomputers in 2024, bringing the total compute power to 36 exaFLOPs.

Condor Galaxy 1 (CG-1)

Optimized for Large Language Models and Generative AI, CG-1 delivers 4 exaFLOPs of 16 bit AI compute, with standard support for up to 600 billion parameter models and extendable configurations that support up to 100 trillion parameter models. With 54 million AI-optimized compute cores, 388 terabits per second of fabric bandwidth, and fed by 72,704 AMD EPYC processor cores, unlike any known GPU cluster, CG-1 delivers near-linear performance scaling from 1 to 64 CS-2 systems using simple data parallelism.

“AMD is committed to accelerating AI with cutting edge high-performance computing processors and adaptive computing products as well as through collaborations with innovative companies like Cerebras that share our vision of pervasive AI,” said Forrest Norrod, executive vice president and general manager, Data Center Solutions Business Group, AMD. “Driven by more than 70,000 AMD EPYC processor cores, Cerebras’ Condor Galaxy 1 will make accessible vast computational resources for researchers and enterprises as they push AI forward.”

CG-1 offers native support for training with long sequence lengths, up to 50,000 tokens out of the box, without any special software libraries. Programing CG-1 is done entirely without complex distributed programming languages, meaning even the largest models can be run without weeks or months spent distributing work over thousands of GPUs.