Chip makers Nvidia, Dell, and the US Energy Department unveil plans to build a next-gen flagship supercomputer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California – all to accelerate scientific research.
The new public/private supercomputer model will be sponsored by the US Department of Energy (DOE), built by Dell Technologies, and powered by NVIDIA’s next-generation Vera Rubin platform, according to a press conference held Thursday at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), where the massive technology will be housed.
To be called the “Doudna,” the new NERSC-10 supercomputer model is nicknamed after Nobel laureate and CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna and is expected to launch in 2026.
Doudna won the coveted 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with her partner Emmanuelle Charpentier for their groundbreaking work on the DNA editing technology.
“Doudna will bring together AI and simulation to help 11,000 scientists tackle fusion, astronomy, and the future of life itself, “ Nvidia said in a web announcement.
Today, we announced a powerful new supercomputer & partnership with @DellTech and @nvidia driving American leadership in the worldwide race for innovation.
undefined Secretary Chris Wright (@SecretaryWright) May 29, 2025
The new system @BerkeleyLab will accelerate breakthroughs to deliver affordable, reliable energy, quantum computing, & more! pic.twitter.com/9WcevXyX9D
Besides breakthroughs in clean fusion energy and quantum computing, scientific advancements expected by Doudna include new classes of superconducting materials, drug discovery that can outpace a pandemic, and real-time data processing from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument at Kitt Peak to help scientists map the universe.
'Humanity's most vital instrument'
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the Doudna “will advance scientific discovery, from chemistry to physics to biology, driving American leadership in the worldwide race for innovation."
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, also at the event, called the scientific supercomputer “one of humanity's most vital instruments for advancing knowledge discovery.”
Huang said the Doudna is not only “the foundation of scientific discovery for our country,” but also a foundation “for economic and technology leadership, and national security."
According to Nvidia, the supercomputer, unlike traditional systems that operate in silos, "Doudna merges simulation, data and AI into a single seamless platform" designed to accelerate a broad set of scientific workflows.
Specifically, the NERSC-10 will be directly connected to the DOE’s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet).
This will allow scientists “to stream data seamlessly into the system from all parts of the country and to analyze it in near real time,” said NERSC Director Sudip Dosanjh.
Doudna is also expected to outperform its predecessor, the NERSC-9 or Perlmutter, a supercomputer developed by Hewlett-Packard, partly powered by Nvidia Tesla GPUs, and also housed at the Berkeley labs.
The Doudna is also expected to achieve more than 10x the Perlmutter in scientific output, using just 2 to 3x the power, Nvidia said.
Overlooking the UC Berkeley campus and federally funded by the DOE, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory research and development center (pictured above) focuses on six main areas of research: computing sciences, physical sciences, earth and environmental sciences, biosciences, energy sciences, and energy technologies, its website states.
“From Al and high-performance computing to cutting-edge materials research, I saw firsthand how this lab is accelerating breakthroughs that strengthen our economy and global leadership,” Wright said after his visit to the 76-building research center.
The Energy Department's supercomputers are also responsible for designing and maintaining the US nuclear weapons arsenal, Reuters reported.
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