AMD and the U.S. Department of Energy have announced a $1 billion partnership to develop two new supercomputers, Lux and Discovery, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Het project omvat samenwerking met Oracle en Hewlett Packard Enterprise, waarbij beide systemen worden aangedreven door AMD-chips.
Lux is scheduled to become operational in early 2026, while Discovery will follow in 2029. The new supercomputers build on the technology from the Frontier supercomputer, also located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Frontier had de titel van ‘s werelds snelste supercomputer totdat El Capitan vorig jaar werd gelanceerd in het Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. AMD contributed to the development of both Frontier and El Capitan, continuing its history of partnerships with the U.S. government on such projects.
In een persbericht wordt Lux beschreven als de eerste speciale AI-fabriek van het land voor wetenschap, energie en nationale veiligheid. It states: “Lux at ORNL is the nation’s first dedicated AI Factory for science, energy, and national security—purpose‑built to train, fine‑tune, and deploy AI foundation models that will accelerate discovery and engineering innovation. Lux is designed to accelerate AI‑driven science through its advanced architecture, optimized for data‑intensive and model‑centric workloads.”
Discovery features a “Bandwidth Everywhere” architecture that enhances performance and energy efficiency compared to Frontier, providing greater computing output at a similar cost. The press release explains that Discovery will support research in multiple fields: “Discovery will drive breakthroughs in energy, biology, advanced materials, national security, and manufacturing innovation. It will help design next‑generation reactors, batteries, catalysts, semiconductors, and critical materials.”
