Prepared for a front-row seat to the subsequent scientific revolution?
That’s the concept behind Doudna — a groundbreaking supercomputer introduced in the present day at Lawrence Berkeley Nationwide Laboratory in Berkeley, California. The system represents a serious nationwide funding in advancing U.S. high-performance computing (HPC) management, making certain U.S. researchers have entry to cutting-edge instruments to deal with international challenges.
“It would advance scientific discovery from chemistry to physics to biology and all powered by — unleashing this energy — of synthetic intelligence,” U.S. Power Secretary Chris Wright (pictured above) stated at in the present day’s occasion.
Often known as NERSC-10, Doudna is called for Nobel laureate and CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna. The subsequent-generation system introduced in the present day is designed not only for velocity however for impression.
Powered by Dell Applied sciences infrastructure with the NVIDIA Vera Rubin structure, and set to launch in 2026, Doudna is tailor-made for real-time discovery throughout the U.S. Division of Power’s most pressing scientific missions. It’s poised to catapult American researchers to the forefront of vital scientific breakthroughs, fostering innovation and securing the nation’s aggressive edge in key technological fields.
“I’m so proud that America continues to speculate on this specific space,” stated NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang. “It’s the basis of scientific discovery for our nation. Additionally it is the inspiration for financial and know-how management.”
“It’s an unimaginable honor to be right here,” Doudna stated, including she was “shocked and delighted” {that a} supercomputer can be named after her. “I feel we’re standing at a very fascinating second in biology,” she added, with individuals with completely different abilities coming collectively to deal with international points.
Designed to Speed up Breakthroughs
In contrast to conventional methods that function in silos, Doudna merges simulation, information and AI right into a single seamless platform.
“The Doudna supercomputer is designed to speed up a broad set of scientific workflows,” stated NERSC Director Sudip Dosanjh. “Doudna might be linked to DOE experimental and observational services by the Power Sciences Community (ESnet), permitting scientists to stream information seamlessly into the system from all components of the nation and to research it in close to actual time.”
It’s engineered to empower over 11,000 researchers with virtually instantaneous responsiveness and built-in workflows, serving to scientists discover larger questions and attain solutions quicker than ever.
“We’re not simply constructing a quicker pc,” stated Nick Wright, superior applied sciences group lead and Doudna chief architect at NERSC. “We’re constructing a system that helps researchers suppose larger and uncover sooner.”
Right here’s what Wright expects Doudna to advance:
- Fusion vitality: Breakthroughs in simulation that unlocks clear fusion vitality.
- Supplies science: AI fashions that design new lessons of superconducting supplies.
- Drug discovery acceleration: Ultrarapid workflow that helps biologists fold proteins quick sufficient to outpace a pandemic.
- Astronomy: Actual-time processing of information from the Darkish Power Spectroscopic Instrument at Kitt Peak to assist scientists map the universe.
Doudna is predicted to outperform its predecessor, Perlmutter, by greater than 10x in scientific output, all whereas utilizing simply 2-3x the ability.
This interprets to a 3-5x enhance in efficiency per watt, a results of improvements in chip design, dynamic load balancing and system-level efficiencies.
AI-Powered Discovery at Scale
Doudna will energy AI-driven breakthroughs throughout high-impact scientific fields nationwide. Highlights embrace:
- AI for protein design: David Baker, a 2024 Nobel laureate, used NERSC methods to help his work utilizing AI to foretell novel protein constructions, addressing challenges throughout scientific disciplines.
- AI for basic physics: Researchers like Benjamin Nachman are utilizing AI to “unfold” detector distortions in particle physics information and analyze proton information from electron-proton colliders.
- AI for supplies science: A collaboration together with Berkeley Lab and Meta created “Open Molecules 2025,” a large dataset for utilizing AI to precisely mannequin complicated molecular chemical reactions. Researchers concerned additionally use NERSC for his or her AI fashions.
Actual-Time Science, Actual-World Influence
Doudna isn’t a standalone system. It’s an integral a part of scientific workflows. DOE’s ESnet will stream information from telescopes, detectors and genome sequencers straight into the machine with low-latency, high-throughput NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking.
This vital information circulation is prioritized by clever quality-of-service mechanisms, making certain it stays quick and uninterrupted, from enter to perception.
This can make the system extremely responsive. On the DIII-D nationwide fusion ignition facility, for instance, information will stream control-room occasions straight into Doudna for rapid-response plasma modeling, so scientists could make changes in actual time.
“We used to consider the supercomputer as a passive participant within the nook,” Wright stated. “Now it’s a part of the complete workflow, linked to experiments, telescopes, detectors.”
The Platform for What’s Subsequent: Unlocking Quantum and HPC Workflows
Doudna helps conventional HPC, cutting-edge AI, real-time streaming and even quantum workflows.
This contains help for scalable quantum algorithm improvement and the codesign of future built-in quantum-HPC methods, utilizing platforms like NVIDIA CUDA-Q.
All of those workflows will run on the next-generation NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform, which is able to mix high-performance CPUs with coherent GPUs, which means all processors can entry and share information on to help probably the most demanding scientific workloads.
Researchers are already porting full pipelines utilizing frameworks like PyTorch, the NVIDIA Holoscan software program improvement package, TensorFlow, NVIDIA cuDNN and NVIDIA CUDA-Q, all optimized for the system’s Rubin GPUs and NVIDIA NVLink structure.
Over 20 analysis groups are already porting full workflows to Doudna by the NERSC Science Acceleration Program, tackling every little thing from local weather fashions to particle physics. This isn’t nearly uncooked compute, it’s about discovery, built-in from concept to perception.
Designed for Urgency
Final yr, AI-assisted science earned two Nobel Prizes. From local weather analysis to pandemic response, the subsequent breakthroughs gained’t watch for higher infrastructure.
With deployment slated for 2026, Doudna is positioned to steer a brand new period of accelerated science. DOE services throughout the nation, from Fermilab to the Joint Genome Institute, will depend on its capabilities to show in the present day’s questions into tomorrow’s breakthroughs.
“This isn’t a system for one discipline,” Wright stated. “It’s for discovery — throughout chemistry, physics and fields we haven’t imagined but.”
As Huang put it, Doudna is “a time machine for science.” It compresses years of discovery into days and offers the world’s hardest issues the ability they’ve been ready for.
This publish has been up to date with feedback from Thursday’s occasion at Lawrence Berkeley Nationwide Laboratory.
