A supercomputer hosted at a NextDC facility in Melbourne’s northern suburbs has been switched on, about nine months after it was promised.

The machine, based on Nvidia DGX H200 systems, is run by La Trobe’s Australian Centre for Artificial Intelligence in Medical Innovation (ACAMI), which was launched last year.

It will use AI “to develop immunotherapies, cancer vaccines, med-tech and healthcare,” La Trobe said in a statement.

“The potential of AI in medical and biotech research is huge,” vice-chancellor professor Theo Farrell said.

“Nvidia DGX H200 systems enable faster translation of research into clinical trials and personalised therapies.”

Each H200 “features eight NVIDIA Hopper-architecture GPUs”, La Trobe said. 

It’s the first deployment of these systems at a university in Australia.

The supercomputer is backed by a $10 million investment by the Victorian government.

The government said in a statement that the supercomputer “will have the ability to process complex 3D imaging and analyse huge amounts of health data in just hours, making it faster and easier to improve diagnoses.”

It will also “help accelerate innovations that span from precision oncology and immunotherapy to cardiovascular risk prediction, digital pathology and breast and colorectal cancer relapse-risk prediction.”

ACAMI will partner with “multiple organisations” to take advantage of the supercomputer.

“One of the first projects to benefit from the AI-processing performance of the DGX H200 systems is a collaboration between ACAMI and The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, researching Niemann-Pick disease type C, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder in children,” La Trobe said.

Dr Ya Hui Hung, the project lead at The Florey, said her team will use DGX H200 systems to assist in the development of gene therapy to treat the disorder.