SURF partners with Cerebras Systems to accelerate computing and AI research workflows

SURF recently joined forces with AI technology pioneer Cerebras Systems to conduct a technology assessment of their hardware offerings. The aim is to explore acceleration of computing and AI workflows.

Collaboration background

To keep Netherlands-based scientific research world-class and competitive, we are constantly exploring, experimenting and redesigning the future of our applications and the digital computing research infrastructure that will be needed. Therefore, as part of the new Experimental Technologies Platform, SURF is collaborating with Cerebras Systems to conduct a technology assessment of the unique "CS-2 wafer-scale engine" (WSE).

Technical background

Cerebras Systems' CS-2 WSE is a purpose-built system designed to accelerate scientific computing and AI workflows. As such, it delivers the wall-clock compute performance of tens to hundreds of graphics processing units on specific workloads while maintaining a small footprint, allowing easier datacenter scaling.

Possible next steps

We are commited to meet the demands of our communities in the coming years while strengthening our partnership with Cerebras and enhancing our internal capabilities. We are currently exploring the feasibility of providing access to the CS-2 system via the SURF Research Cloud. In the meantime, we invite you to share your use cases for experimenting with this chip, to foster the opportunity for additional exploration!

Interested?

SURFs Experimental Technologies Platform has a dedicated team of expert system administrators and consultants. has a dedicated team of expert system administrators and consultants. Are you interested in co-creating and experimenting with emerging technologies and methodologies? Then, share your innovative challenges with us!