Berkeley Lab’s Doudna Supercomputer Set to Accelerate AI and Scientific Breakthroughs

New Doudna Supercomputer at Berkeley Lab to Advance AI Research

A new supercomputer, named Doudna, will be built at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to support artificial intelligence research, scientific computing, and quantum-classical computing. This project is a collaboration between the Department of Energy, Dell Technologies, and Nvidia.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang highlighted the significance of this development: "We're going to take a giant step up in several areas in high performance computing for scientific computing. But also, artificial intelligence as well as quantum classical computing."

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright emphasized the broader impact of Doudna: "It's going to lead to tremendous advancement in science, and it's also going to play a role in national defense. And that is what makes it so critical that the United States lead in artificial intelligence."

A Tribute to Jennifer Doudna

The supercomputer is named after UC Berkeley professor Jennifer Doudna, a Nobel Prize winner in 2020 for her work on CRISPR gene editing technology. Reflecting on the project, Doudna said, "For me, it really signifies the coming together of computing and biology. This is the future. This is how the next breakthroughs are going to be made."

Capabilities and Timeline

Doudna is expected to be operational by 2027 and will be at least ten times faster than the current Perlmutter supercomputer at Berkeley Lab. Perlmutter ranks as the 19th fastest supercomputer worldwide and supports over 11,000 scientists through the National Energy Research Supercomputing Center (NERSC).

Jonathan Carter, Associate Lab Director for Computing Sciences, explained the scale: "So, imagine you have a really souped-up laptop or a gaming PC, and imagine you could put 10,000 of them together tightly, so that any one program that you are running could execute on all those 10,000 CPUs at the same time."

NERSC supports a wide range of scientific missions, including nuclear fusion simulations, biological research, climate modeling, and mapping the universe.

Context Within the Supercomputing Landscape

The world’s fastest computer is currently El Capitan, located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area. Doudna will add significant computing resources to this region, strengthening capabilities in AI and scientific research.

For researchers looking to deepen their AI expertise, exploring practical training options can be beneficial. Resources such as Complete AI Training’s latest AI courses provide structured learning paths to keep pace with advancing technology.