Digital Event Horizon
CoreWeave has unveiled its latest investment in two new GPU bit barns in Crawley and London Docklands as part of a £1 billion expansion plan. The facilities will provide cutting-edge AI computing resources, including Nvidia Hopper-based accelerators.
CoreWeave invests £1 billion ($1.2 billion USD) in two new GPU bit barns in Crawley and London Docklands. The facilities are designed to provide cutting-edge AI computing resources to businesses and organizations across the UK. CoreWeave partners with Digital Realty and Global Switch to support the UK government's AI Opportunities Action Plan. The datacenters will generate £47 billion ($57 billion) a year in economic growth through AI adoption. The facilities use Nvidia Hopper architecture-based GPUs, offering up to 141 GB of memory and nearly 4 petaFLOPS performance. CoreWeave's investment supports businesses looking to leverage AI technologies, including Meta's largest model Llama 3.1 405B. The datacenters will provide high-capacity computing resources with over a terabyte of memory per server.
CoreWeave, a leading datacenter operator, has unveiled its latest investment in the United Kingdom, with two new GPU bit barns located in Crawley and the London Docklands. The £1 billion ($1.2 billion USD) investment marks a significant milestone in the company's expansion plans for the European market, as it aims to establish itself as a major player in the growing AI infrastructure sector.
The two datacenters are part of CoreWeave's ambitious strategy to provide cutting-edge AI computing resources to businesses and organizations across the UK. The facilities are designed to be highly efficient and scalable, with a focus on supporting the latest advancements in artificial intelligence research and development.
According to Mike Mattacola, Chief Business Officer at CoreWeave, "The UK is an important market for CoreWeave, with our European headquarters here and further operational plans for the country." The company's decision to invest heavily in the UK demonstrates its commitment to supporting the nation's aspirations to become an AI superpower.
As part of its efforts to support the UK government's AI Opportunities Action Plan, CoreWeave has partnered with colocation providers Digital Realty and Global Switch to develop the two datacenters. The plan aims to generate £47 billion ($57 billion) a year in economic growth through the adoption of AI technologies.
The datacenters are equipped with Nvidia accelerators based on the company's Hopper architecture, which was first introduced in late 2022. The H200 GPU is among Nvidia's most advanced GPUs of the Hopper generation, offering up to 141 GB of speedy HBM3e memory and nearly 4 petaFLOPS of sparse FP8 performance.
While the news may generate excitement among enthusiasts of AI and computing, it's worth noting that the facilities do not incorporate the latest Nvidia Blackwell chips. Those parts are still in their infancy, having begun making their way to market in Q4 2024. Instead, CoreWeave has opted for a proven technology with the Hopper architecture, ensuring that its customers will have access to reliable and efficient AI computing resources.
The two datacenters are expected to be highly beneficial to businesses and organizations looking to leverage AI technologies. For instance, a single H200 system is now able to run Meta's largest model Llama 3.1 405B at full 16-bit resolution. Previously, the model would have had to be distributed across two nodes or quantized to 8-bits to run on an H100-based system.
The facilities' capacity to support ever-growing frontier models is a significant advantage for CoreWeave's customers. With more than a terabyte of high bandwidth memory — eight GPUs — per server, the datacenters should be better equipped to handle increasing demands from AI applications.
While details about the exact number of GPUs housed in each facility are not yet available, past deployments have typically involved clusters of 10,000 or more accelerators. CoreWeave's decision to deploy such high-capacity facilities reflects its ambition to break into new markets and provide customers with cutting-edge computing resources.
The datacenter builder is currently operating 28 datacenters across the globe, with plans to bring 10 additional bit barns online by the end of 2025. These efforts have been supported by a flood of venture capital and debt financing totaling billions of dollars amid the AI boom.
Aspirations aside, supporting the additional AI infrastructure necessary to see these plans come to fruition may prove troublesome for the UK's National Grid, as its CEO has previously warned. Despite this challenge, CoreWeave remains committed to its expansion plans, confident that its technology and partnerships will enable it to make a meaningful contribution to the growth of AI in the UK.
In summary, CoreWeave's £1 billion investment in two new datacenters in Crawley and London marks an important milestone in the company's efforts to establish itself as a major player in the European market. With cutting-edge technology and partnerships with colocation providers, CoreWeave is well-positioned to support businesses and organizations looking to leverage AI technologies.
Related Information:
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2025/01/13/coreweave_datacenter_uk/
Published: Mon Jan 13 16:37:08 2025 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
