Overview
- The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is funding a 1.4MW machine at UKAEA’s Culham Campus in Oxfordshire, with first operations targeted for June 2026.
- Sunrise is specified to deliver up to 6.76 exaFLOPS for AI workloads using AMD EPYC CPUs and Instinct GPUs on Dell PowerEdge systems, with WEKA storage and support from Intel and the University of Cambridge.
- It is designed to accelerate work on plasma turbulence, advanced materials for reactors, and tritium fuel breeding technologies.
- The system will support the LIBRTI tritium program and the STEP prototype power-plant roadmap into the 2040s, and it serves as the first major infrastructure for the UK’s planned AI Growth Zone at Culham.
- Officials describe Sunrise as the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer dedicated to fusion energy, complementing a separate £36 million investment in Cambridge and using an AI performance metric distinct from traditional supercomputing rankings.