- Oracle claims its Zettascale10 system can reach a peak of 16 zettaFLOPS
- The project uses around 800,000 Nvidia GPUs distributed across data centers
- OpenAI’s Stargate cluster in Texas runs on new Oracle infrastructure
Oracle has announced what it calls the largest AI supercomputer in the cloud, the OCI Zettascale10.
The company claims the system can deliver 16 zettaFLOPS of peak performance on 800,000 Nvidia GPUs.
This output, when divided, equates to approximately 20 petaflops per GPU, which roughly matches the Grace Blackwell GB300 Ultra chip used in high-end desktop AI systems.
Network design for large-scale AI workloads
Oracle says the platform forms the basis of OpenAI’s Stargate cluster in Abilene, Texas, designed to handle some of the most demanding AI workloads currently emerging in research and commercial use.
“The custom, highly scalable RoCE design optimizes performance at the gigawatt scale while keeping most of the power focused on compute…” said Peter Hoeschele, vice president of infrastructure and industrial computing at OpenAI.
At the heart of the Zettascale10 system is the Oracle Acceleron RoCE network, designed to increase the scalability and reliability of data-intensive AI operations.
This architecture uses network interface cards as mini-switches, connecting GPUs across multiple isolated network planes.
The design aims to reduce latency between GPUs and allow tasks to continue running if a network path fails.
“Powered by Nvidia’s full-stack AI infrastructure, OCI Zettascale10 provides the computing framework needed to advance cutting-edge AI research and help organizations around the world move from experimentation to industrialized AI,” said Ian Buck, vice president of Hyperscale at Nvidia.
Oracle says this structure can reduce costs by simplifying tiers within the network while maintaining consistent performance across nodes.
It also introduces pluggable and receive linear optics to reduce power and cooling consumption without reducing bandwidth.
Although Oracle’s numbers are impressive, the company has not provided independent verification of its 16 zettaFLOPS claim.
Cloud performance metrics may vary depending on how throughput is calculated, and Oracle’s comparison may rely on theoretical peaks rather than sustained rates.
Given that the system’s announced total equates to the sum of 800,000 high-end GPUs, actual efficiency could depend heavily on network design and software optimization.
Analysts can wait to see if the setup delivers comparable performance to major AI clusters already run by other major cloud providers.
The Zettascale10 positions Oracle alongside other major players striving to provide the infrastructure behind the best GPUs and AI tools.
The company says customers could train and deploy large models in Oracle’s distributed cloud environment, supported by data sovereignty measures.
Oracle also claims that Zettascale10 provides operational flexibility through independent plan-level maintenance, enabling updates with less downtime.
“With OCI Zettascale10, we are merging OCI’s Oracle Acceleron RoCE network architecture with next-generation Nvidia AI infrastructure to deliver multi-gigawatt AI capacity at unparalleled scale,” said Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
“Customers can build, train and deploy their largest AI models into production using less power and will have the freedom to operate on Oracle’s distributed cloud with strong data and AI sovereignty…”
Still, observers note that other vendors are building their own large-scale GPU clusters and advanced cloud storage systems, which could reduce Oracle’s advantage.
This system will be deployed next year and only then will it be clear whether the architecture can meet the demand for scalable, efficient and reliable AI computing.
Via HPC wire
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