The new system, Aspire 2B offers four times the combined computing capacity of its predecessors, Aspire 2A and 2A+, according to The Straits Times.

Unveiled on Monday at Nanyang Technological University, Aspire 2B is equipped with 1,500 Nvidia H200 graphics processing units, making it the country's largest cluster of advanced AI chips. It will support more than 9,000 researchers from universities, research institutes and government agencies, allowing them to build larger AI models and complete experiments more quickly.

According to Singapore's Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo, the new system will enable researchers to train AI models that were previously too large to develop domestically. It will also support advanced climate modeling that combines AI with physics-based simulations, as well as higher-resolution weather forecasting.

"This can help us anticipate intense rainfall and rising seas earlier, and plan our whole urban development and coastal defences around them," she added.

The Aspire 2B supercomputer. Photo courtesy of the National Supercomputing Center

Aspire 2B is housed in a 400-square-meter facility at Nanyang Technological University and is managed by the National Supercomputing Center (NSCC), which was established in 2015 to support Singapore's high-performance computing needs, according to Singapore news outlet Mothership.

NSCC said the system will help researchers develop larger multimodal AI models capable of understanding Asian languages, interpreting images, generating more natural speech and performing tasks independently.

The supercomputer will also be used to train healthcare AI models using larger and more diverse clinical datasets, including text, images and audio. The technology could eventually help hospitals identify health risks earlier and provide more personalized preventive care, NSCC added.

Aspire 2B is expected to be connected to a new quantum computer scheduled for installation in Singapore, ranked as the world's second-richest country by GDP per capita in 2025 behind Switzerland, by the end of 2026.

Teo said future technologies such as AI agents and physical AI systems would require far greater computing power than current applications. She added that the success of Aspire 2B would depend not only on its hardware capabilities but also on how effectively researchers use the system.