The National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States and Nvidia, an artificial intelligence (AI) chip maker, have announced a new partnership to launch the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) for AI advancement.
The objectives of the NAIRR pilot program, which is national, are to increase access to the resources required for “responsible AI discovery and innovation.” Nvidia pledged to contribute $30 million in technology for the next two years.
The developer intends to gather perspectives from researchers utilizing its platforms to improve the efficacy of the technology, in addition to providing NVIDIA AI Enterprise software and NVIDIA DGX Cloud AI supercomputing resources.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology are two of the ten additional U.S. government partners of NAIRR.
The collaborations on the NAIRR pilot, according to NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan, demonstrate the “urgency” of developing such resources for the “future of AI in America.”
“By investing in AI research through the NAIRR pilot, the United States unleashes discovery and impact and bolsters its global competitiveness.”
NAIRR will eventually provide communities and researchers with access to computation, data, models, and software, according to Katie Antypas, director of the NSF’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure.
The NAIRR pilot is based on the objectives outlined in the executive order on artificial intelligence (AI) issued by the Biden administration in October 2023. This order instructed the NSF to initiate an NAIRR pilot program within three months.
This follows the January 24 announcement by Nvidia of a new partnership with data center operator Equinix to provide supercomputing systems to the company’s corporate clients.
According to NVIDIA’s founder and chief executive officer, Jensen Huang, generative AI is “transforming every industry.”
“Now, enterprises can own NVIDIA AI supercomputing and software, paired with the operational efficiency of Equinix management, in hundreds of data centers worldwide.”
Equinix, headquartered in California, is a global leader in the proportion of colocation data centers across five continents and thirty-one nations, with a total of 248 data centers.