Dell Technologies and Cambridge officials note the upgrade will help turn bold ideas into real-world impact in health, climate resilience, and public services.

Since its 2023 launch, the AIRR program has seen Cambridge, Oxford, and London universities dominate initial access to supercomputer time, accounting for a large share among the biggest institutions.

The AIRR program is expanding free AI compute for UK researchers, startups, and SMEs, with DAWN already powering more than 350 projects and government framing the investment as unlocking Britain’s AI potential on the global stage.

Funding from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and UK Research and Innovation will procure AMD MI355X chips and support Dell’s server infrastructure to upgrade DAWN, boosting capacity and reliability.

Dell’s hardware platform is designed to scale and stay reliable, enabling continuous operation and wider access for academia and industry.

The DAWN upgrade replaces part of its GPU fleet with AMD MI355X chips built on CDNA 3, optimized for large-scale transformer models and deep-learning workloads, with Dell providing the supporting hardware platform.

AMD notes that combining EPYC processors and Instinct accelerators will accelerate scientific discoveries as AI models grow more complex.

The Compute Roadmap (July 2025) lays out a long-term plan to expand compute capacity to support UK AI research and industry growth.

The Cambridge upgrade is part of a national effort to bolster the Oxford–Cambridge corridor and national AI infrastructure, with projects like Isambard-AI in Bristol and a planned Edinburgh supercomputer.

Leaders emphasize the upgrade will bolster the UK’s national computing ecosystem, enabling researchers, clinicians, and innovators to tackle complex public-interest challenges with premier compute.

University of Cambridge officials say the upgrade strengthens research resilience and public-service breakthroughs, stressing collaboration with industry partners like Dell to ensure world-class compute access.

The upgrade will make the DAWN system six times more powerful by spring 2026 and will be free to use for UK researchers and startups, with ongoing monitoring to inform future funding.