Nvidia Invests $500 Million in Israeli Supercomputer Initiative

Nvidia is making a significant investment in Israel by building a powerful supercomputer designed for research and development. This supercomputer will be equipped with the company’s latest Blackwell GPUs and is expected to consume around 30 megawatts of power, marking a major step in advancing its technology.

The facility will span 10,000 square meters within the Mevo Carmel Science and Industry Park, located near Yokne'am Illit. Nvidia plans to house hundreds of its liquid-cooled Blackwell-based systems, along with BlueField-3 SuperNICs, Spectrum-X800, and Quantum-X800 switches.

The primary goal of this supercomputer is to help Nvidia staff in developing cutting-edge technology for data centers. Although the exact number of GPUs has not been disclosed, reports suggest that the final setup may include several thousand accelerators, positioning it to compete with Israel's existing supercomputer, Israel-1.

Israel-1 features 2,048 H100 accelerators and has the capability to deliver a peak performance of 69 petaFLOPS for scientific tasks and up to 8 exaFLOPS for artificial intelligence applications. In contrast, Nvidia's new Blackwell technology is projected to offer significantly enhanced performance, with up to 2.5 times the floating-point capabilities compared to its predecessor, Hopper, and significantly increased memory bandwidth.

The construction of this impressive system reportedly began last year, and it is anticipated to commence operations in the first half of 2025.

Impact of Export Regulations

As Nvidia advances with its plans, it may face challenges related to recent export controls imposed by the Biden administration on AI accelerators. Depending on the number of GPUs Nvidia intends to deploy, there could be potential compliance issues with these regulations.

Under the new rules, Israel is classified as a tier-two nation. This designation could limit its ability to import up to 50,000 advanced GPUs over a period spanning from 2025 to 2027. However, the regulations will not take effect for another 120 days, allowing Nvidia some breathing room to finalize shipments needed to complete the supercomputer.

There is also speculation that this new supercomputer, which will be used solely for internal research and development, might be exempt from the export caps. Additionally, orders with a total computational power of around 1,700 advanced GPUs would not require special licenses under the current import regulations.

The relationship between Israel and the United States could be beneficial, as Israel might receive "National Verified End User" status. This would potentially raise the import limit to around 320,000 accelerators over the same two-year timeframe.

Nevertheless, there is growing concern among Israeli tech firms about the impact of these export restrictions, with many fearing that it could hinder Israel's ability to compete in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Nvidia, supercomputer, Israel