Isambard 2, one of the first Arm-based supercomputers, is finally set to retire after six years. First deployed in May 2018, this 10,000-core machine used 64-bit Armv8 ThunderX2 processors developed by Cavium and manufactured by TSMC, plus a few Nvidia P100 GPUs.
The Great Western 4 (GW4) Alliance, a group of universities from Bristol, Bath, Cardiff, and Exeter, was the primary operator of the Isambard 2, with Professor Simon McIntosh-Smith, Head of the Microelectronics Group at the University of Bristol, leading the project. He also broke the news about Isambard 2’s retirement in an X post, saying that its successor, Isambard 3, will come online to take over its duties. The Arm supercomputer will go offline at 9 am on Monday, September 30, so users must move all data off it by then.
