UK powers on supercomputer that runs 21 quintillion operations/sec

The UK has officially powered on its most powerful publicly accessible AI supercomputer, Isambard-AI, located at the University of Bristol. Named after engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the £225 million system can perform 21 exaFLOPs (21 quintillion floating-point operations per second), making it a significant asset for British AI research. Although it ranks 11th globally in processing power, Isambard-AI is a major step for the UK, supporting public-sector projects aimed at addressing climate change, enhancing NHS services, and driving medical and technological innovation. The supercomputer operates primarily on nuclear-powered electricity and costs nearly £1 million monthly to run, with the government emphasizing its long-term benefits, including regional development through AI Growth Zones in Scotland and Wales. Isambard-AI is already enabling impactful research projects, such as developing AI models to predict human behavior in real time using wearable cameras, which could improve safety in high-risk environments like construction sites and crowd management during