US Energy Department unveils supercomputer that merges with AI | Technology News
Scientific computing and artificial intelligence were once separate worlds, using different kinds of calculations on dinctly different hardware. But the two fields are steadily merging, as shown a massive new machine coming to Berkeley, California.
On Thursday, the Department of Energy’s laboratory near the University of California, Berkeley, said it had selected Dell Technologies to deliver its next flagship supercomputer in 2026. The system will use Nvidia chips tailored for AI calculations and the simulations common to energy research and other scientific fields.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory expects the new machine — to be named for Jennifer Doudna, a Berkeley biochem who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize for chemry — to offer more than a tenfold speed boost over the lab’s most powerful current system. If fully outfitted, the machine could be the Energy Department’s biggest resource for tasks like training AI models, said Jonathan Carter, associate laboratory director for computing sciences at the Berkeley center.
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The supercomputer stands out for its technology choices, which indicate the growing desire for government labs to adopt more technologies from commercial AI systems. Nvidia chips, though widely used big cloud companies as well as in supercomputers, were passed over the Energy Department for three previous record-setting machines that were assembled Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Dell has hardly been a player in the highest end of the supercomputer market, but it has had success in large commercial AI installations.
“HPE has been sweeping the DOE space,” said Addison Snell, the CEO of Intersect360 Research, which tracks the supercomputer market. “This is a big win for Dell.”
Chris Wright, secretary of energy, who has compared AI’s development to the Manhattan Project, called the Doudna machine a key tool for winning the global AI race in remarks prepared for a Thursday event in Berkeley to announce the system.
