This week it became known about the trend towards deepening cooperation between the authorities of the UAE and Saudi Arabia with Nvidia, although some time ago the countries lost open access to the latest chips of this brand due to US sanctions. Starting next year, Saudi Arabia can gain access to Nvidia accelerators up to the H200.
Image source: NVIDIA
In an interview with CNBC last week, the deputy head of the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA), Abdulrahman Tariq Habib, expressed hope that the country will be able to gain access to Nvidia’s most powerful computing accelerators starting next year. This will be very important for Saudi Arabia, according to the official, since it will facilitate cooperation between the United States and Saudi Arabia, as well as develop computing capabilities in the kingdom. Local infrastructure has been preparing for these changes over the previous three years, according to a department spokesman. By 2030, the country expects to receive up to 12% of its GDP in the field of artificial intelligence. Projects in this area will be financed by the sovereign Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.
Since May of this year, the export of a certain range of Nvidia accelerators to the countries of the Middle East has been limited, since the US authorities are afraid of the transit of these products to China. The latter could also become a partner of Saudi Arabia if the United States deprives this Middle Eastern country of access to advanced technologies of American origin, as some experts believe.
Bloomberg reported this week that Nvidia will partner with UAE-based G42 on an initiative to build infrastructure to more accurately predict changes in climate and weather. According to the project participants, G42 will make it possible to create an infrastructure in the UAE to accelerate calculations and work with the digital twin of our planet Earth-2, in order to use it for weather forecasting. The system will operate with more than 100 petabytes of geophysical data.
The G42 company received $1.5 billion in investments from Microsoft this year, which many experts interpreted as a signal indicating a rapprochement between the UAE and the United States. It is generally accepted that in order to gain access to Microsoft technologies and capital, the G42 leadership had to give the American side some guarantees that it would not increase cooperation with the PRC. A partnership is being established between G42 and OpenAI. The management of the first company noted that cooperation with Nvidia will not only promote innovation, but also solve problems that are critical for all of humanity.