The Victorian government has given the Australian Centre for Artificial Intelligence in Medical Innovation’s (ACAMI) $10 million towards La Trobe University’s deployment of NVIDIA DGX H200 supercomputer.
It sits in NEXTDC’s Melbourne Data Centre in Tullamarine and is the first to be commissioned at a university in Australia, giving scientists the ability to push the boundaries of AI-driven medical and biotech research.
ACAMI, based at Latrobe University, brings together world-leading experts in AI and medical research to change the way we diagnose and treat cancer, infectious and cardiovascular diseases.
It’s hard to figure out why it cost Victorian taxpayers $10m when a H200 GPU costs around A$50,000 per chip and a configurations like a 130kg Nvidia DGX H200 supercomputer, with 8 H200s, would set you back around $500,000. But as you know, AI processing doesn’t come cheaply (the H200 costs around $15 a GPU/hour – so around $250,000 annually for a 40-hour week) and saving lives is priceless.
ACAMI has commissioned three NVIDIA DGX H200 systems and each one has eight NVIDIA Hopper-architecture GPUs with a total of 1.128 TB of HBM3e memory at 4.8 TB/s bandwidth.
So add those costs up and more than $2.25 million is spent in the first 12 months.
The supercomputer has the ability to process complex 3D imaging and analyse huge amounts of health data in just hours, making it faster and easier to improve diagnoses; and will help accelerate innovations is areas such as oncology and immunotherapy to cardiovascular risk prediction, digital pathology and breast and colorectal cancer relapse-risk prediction.
La Trobe Vice-Chancellor Professor Theo Farrell is pretty chuffed.
“AI is revolutionising society at great speed and La Trobe is committed to ensuring that our students and the communities we serve are empowered to adapt and succeed in this rapidly changing world,” he said.
“The potential of AI in medical and biotech research is huge. NVIDIA DGX H200 systems enable faster translation of research into clinical trials and personalised therapies.
“La Trobe’s Australian Centre for AI in Medical Innovation also provides a hands-on training ground for Australian scientists, clinicians and data scientists, building sovereign AI expertise that is crucial for rural and Indigenous health initiatives, biotech competitiveness and the nation’s long-term digital health resilience.”
Victorian economic growth and jobs minister Danny Pearson said the NVIDIA supercomputer’s AI will accelerate research into clinical trials and treatments.
“Victoria is proud to be home to this supercomputer that will deliver more medical breakthroughs and improve the healthcare for Victorians and people around the world,” he said.
“There are now three world-leading centres of medical research – Boston, London and Victoria – and this groundbreaking technology will support our world-leading researchers to accelerate medical innovations in the state.”
Dr Ya Hui Hung
One of its first tasks is a collaboration between ACAMI and The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, researching Niemann-Pick disease type C, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder in children.
Dr Ya Hui Hung, the project lead at The Florey, said her team will use DGX H200 systems to assist in the development of gene therapy to treat the disorder, completing work that previously took days in just hours.
“The super processing performance of NVIDIA DGX H200 systems will help us to explore more options and get results faster,” she said.
“It could also provide insights into other forms of dementia, which affect over 400,000 Australians and is projected to double by 2058.”
