SoftBank Adds 4,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs to Strengthen Japan’s AI Platform
SoftBank boosts Japan’s AI capabilities with 4,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, allowing its computing platform to handle advanced LLMs and provide AI services nationwide.
Tokyo, Japan — SoftBank Corp has finished installing 4,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs to improve its AI computing platform in Japan. The company wants to promote the development of large language models (LLMs) in Japan and provide businesses and research institutions with cutting-edge infrastructure.
With this update, SoftBank’s AI platform now has 6,000 GPUs, giving it a computing power of about 4.7 exaflops. This is a big increase from its 700 petaflops ability when it first came out in September 2023 with only 2,000 Nvidia Ampere GPUs. The tech giant wants to make its platform even bigger. By fiscal year 2025, they want it to have 10,000 GPUs and 25.7 exaflops of computing power.
As its first job, the tool will help SB Intuitions, a SoftBank subsidiary that is making complex LLMs with up to 390 billion parameters. SoftBank wants Japan to be a leader in AI creation, which is shown by the fact that these models will work in more than one way. SoftBank wants to use the tool for its projects and also give it to other groups in Japan as “Infrastructure-as-a-Service.”
SoftBank has not specified which data center is holding the platform, but the company has 13 locations across the country, including Tokyo, Osaka, and Kitakyushu. SoftBank has also announced plans for a 150MW data center in Osaka. The center will be built on an LCD factory that is closing soon.
SoftBank’s big plans for AI come after several smart moves. In early 2024, Masayoshi Son, the founder of the company was planning to fund an AI chip project called, “Izanagi” to the tune of $100 billion with the intention to rival Nvidia’s. SoftBank bought the British company Graphcore in July, and it now has a controlling stake in Arm, which it made public last year after buying it for $32 billion.
As Japan’s AI industry grows, SoftBank’s upgrades to its computing platforms and new business ventures show that it is committed to improving AI infrastructure and skills both in Japan and around the world.
