Graphics chip maker Nvidia has said it plans to build Britain’s fastest supercomputer that healthcare researchers can use to work on medical problems including Covid-19.

Nvidia, based in Santa Clara, California, said it will spend £40 million on the supercomputer, dubbed Cambridge-1, which will consist of 80 Nvidia systems and is expected to be online by the end of the year.

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said Cambridge-1 will be available to healthcare researchers using artificial intelligence to working on urgent medical challenges.

Announced today, NVIDIA is building Cambridge-1, an AI supercomputer that will serve as a hub of innovation for the U.K., furthering the work of the nation’s outstanding researchers in healthcare and drug discovery. #GTC20 https://t.co/bdHe9vhyTt

— NVIDIA AI (@NVIDIAAI) October 5, 2020

“Tackling the world’s most pressing challenges in healthcare requires massively powerful computing resources to harness the capabilities of AI,” Mr Huang said.

Cambridge-1 would be ranked the world’s 29th most powerful supercomputer and the most powerful in the UK, the company said.

Pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca are among the groups that have already signed up to use the supercomputer.

The announcement comes after the company said last month it agreed to buy UK-based chip designer Arm Holdings for up to 40 billion dollars, (£31.2 billion) and would set up an artificial intelligence research centre in Cambridge, where Arm is headquartered.